Team VI: "I Would Do Anything For Love"

Charles Hung '07, Interactive C god, RUNTIME ERR 08 debugger
Christopher Kim '06, RF hater by day, M&M's lover by night
Joseph Liao '06, laptop owner, solderer extraordinaire

 

Somedays I pray for silence
Somedays I pray for soul
Somedays I just pray to the God of Sex and Drums and Rock 'N' Roll
Some nights I lose the feeling
Some nights I lose control
Some nights I just lose it all when I watch you dance and the thunder rolls
Maybe I'm lonely
And that's all I'm qualified to be
There's just one and only
The one and only promise I can keep
As long as the wheels are turning
As long as the fires are burning
As long as your prayers are coming true -
You better believe it - !
That I would do anything for love!

-Meatloaf

  

 

Introducing Team VI

From left: non-6.270 team member, Joseph Liao '06, Christopher Kim '06, Charles Hung '07

I Would Do Anything For Love is the brainchild of three MIT undergraduates. Its formation was brought about by the unlikely sequence of events; Leo Wong '06 decided one fateful day that he wanted to compete in the 6.270 Autonomous Robot Design Competition. Asking two of his fraternity brothers to accompany him, the initial team consisted of Joseph Liao '06, Charles Hung '07, and Wong himself.

Upon registering for the competition, Wong decided to further challenge himself by registering for the 6.370 Robocraft competition with Christopher Kim '06 and Han Xu '06.

But why stop there? By the end of a restful winter break, Wong had also successfully landed himself a programming externship at a nearby company, effectively eradicating any possibility of staying in the 6.270 and 6.370 competitions, which would have been relatively impossible.

And with the hands of destiny as a guide, Liao, Hung, and Kim found themselves drawn together by the ambitions of Wong, to inevitably fight the good fight as a single entity, as I Would Do Anything For Love.

 

 

Strategy

Our initial strategy at the beginning of the month was simply thus: to gather as many of a single color of balls to outvote the other team, and then use the other-colored balls to negatively score in the opponent's scoring zones. More specifically, the idea was to take the six nearest balls (the bi-colored ball zones), and then the next two groups of balls, either to the right or left, based on which direction the opponent's robot decided to move.

Let's suppose the opponent's robot turned towards the red side. After taking in the the six mixed balls, our robot would then attempt to turn towards the green side and gather the nearer groups of balls. Ideally, these fourteen balls would then be used to vote in the green side, turning the vote in favor of green. The next eight green balls would then be pushed into our scoring area at the far side of the table, and the rest pushed into opponent scoring areas, thus maximizing the score gap.

The robot was to be navigated by only the RF system and a gyroscope, with distance functions to control starting and stopping and trigonometric functions to calculate precise turn angles. A 1:45 ratio gearbox was implemented in a quadruple motor, two-wheel differential drive system, for maximum speed with formidable torque.

In reality, did any of this actually work? Of course not. Well, not all of it.

What actually carried our robot through three eventual wins? Well, it oriented correctly. This means that it new which way to point to collect the first two mixed balls near the center wall. Then it successfully made a 180-degree turn, allowing it to collect the next four mixed balls, carrying the six altogether into the nearby scoring area.

Then it froze.

And that, folks, is how we placed in the top quarter of the 6.270 competition robots.

 

The competition robot's servo/motor gearboxes.

 

Team VI's competition robot, pre-weight distribution adjustments.

 

 

 

Design

The design of the robot stemmed from a fairly straightforward philosophy: to create a physical structure that performed the required task as simply as possible. Because of the team's minimalistic approach, lightweight and aesthetically-pleasing was favored over complex and bulky.

The robot's lightweight nature allowed the team to capitalize on speed. With unbridled speed, Team VI's prototypes peeled out on tile floors and performed wheelies upon acceleration when surface grip was good. This forced the team to perform weight distribution adjustments, in order to a create a robot that moved efficiently and reliably.

High speeds also forced the team to focus on structural integrity; the chassis was reinforced heavily with vertical bracing, to allow the robot to withstand greater impact. Its outstanding bracing was revealed to the team when during a test, the robot accelerated to unheard-of speeds and proceeded to crack the wood framing the voting area of the board.

The robot remained unscathed.

 

Code

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Omni-motor ribbon-cabling for the Handy Board

 

Team VI Pictures

The LEGO Man serves as a reverse accelerometer on the robot's final design.

The robot is strongly braced in anticipation of frontal impact.

Analog Devices' gyroscope became the heart and soul of Team VI's robot navigation and alignment.

Joseph Liao '06, solderer extraordinaire, assembles the blinking LED-phototransistors.

Late nights are conducted courtesy of Dr. Pepper and the caffeine contained therein.

The portable coding rig consists of a Dell Inspiron 8200, Microsoft S+arck Optical Mouse, Tivoli PAL, and various interconnects.

Charles Hung '07 experiences firsthand the joy of debugging & testing, time attack mode.

Christopher Kim '06 wears his MIT polo shirt with pride during a high school glamour shoot.

Charles Hung '07 wows MIT audiences not only with his superior coding, but with his breakdancing abilities as well.

Eight hours prior to impounding, Christopher Kim '06 spontaneously falls asleep as well, in his chair.

 

Six hours before impounding, Joseph Liao '06 proceeds to undergo a much-needed nap. On a lab table.

Charles Hung '07 and Christopher Kim '06 showcase the much-anticipated Team VI Competition Robot.

 

"Did you or did you not cut the trace to the Handy Board? Yes or no?!?"

-David Ziegler, 6.270 head organizer, to Team VI

 

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