6.270 Team 12 – Blog

[Home] [Design] [Strategies] [Competition] [Results] [Blog]

Week 1 (1/2/05 ~ 1/9/05)

We have actually built a robot out of legos! Amazing what we can learn within a week ~ bracing legos and gear trains and faulty phone wires. Soldering all the pieces together was one of the craziest times because we kept messing up. We were the 2^ND Group to solder the chips to our expansion board -.-;; Matt redeemed himself though with a nice 2^nd expansion board. Our gear train was pretty tricky and mounting the motor was even more.

While other groups’ test robots were small and compact, our robot was pretty big especially with just 2 gear trains and motors but it doesn’t fall apart!!! :-p That is how good of a bracing job we did the first time. Our group appears to have a complicated relationship, but as long as we are still 3 at the end of the competition we are no worse off. By the 3^rd day of the first week, we have already noticed how we our chemistry do not mesh (but that is okay because this is not a chemistry class!) On Assignment 3, we have to find a point given our location. The Code just doesn’t work with no reason why (yeah right). ~Marj

Week 2 (1/10/05 – 1/16/05)

Assignment 3 COMPLETED! We decided to use a simple method instead of the complicated method since we’ve been working on it for 2 days already and have no clue what is wrong. So it is checked off for now! Now, we started on the real robot! Sadly test robot got taken apart because our real one had to be born. We also came upon the trouble of how to split the work because there were only 2 main parts, coding and building, but we ended up with all 3 building the complex robot. However, on the end before checkoff for Assignment 4, we figured that the robot with the shooter was too complex so we decided to change it to a simple ballgate. No one liked the idea because we put lots of effort into the construction, but we saw that it was for the better to go for a simpler design. ~Marj

Pics of the Robot Given Up

R.I.P.

Week 3 (1/17/05) – 1/23/05)

It’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday so lab is closed so staying home and doing some strategizing and webpaging and coding :-p. More peaceful because we are all in front of a computer (I don’t think we can live without a computer and just at home instead of lab). We go to lab usually from 10 am to 12 am, 14 hours with out only a couple of breaks between for lunch and dinner. ß Definitely a lot of stress on the mind and body. ~Marj

Week 4 (Tuesday 3:16AM)

I only have time to blog now because we need to Zap charge our handyboard. Coding and testing have been going on all day; but sadly, during the past 6 hours we have made ZERO progress. We have 12 hours to go until impounding, and I’m fairly confident that we can accomplish TWICE AS MUCH!!

On another note, I really wanted to find a date. But when you spend 23.5 hours a day in lab and 0.5 hour to nap, it’s a tad difficult to do anything else in your

life. ~Z

(Friday 2:17 PM)

Yay!, 6.270 is finally over! Now I get the whole day to myself instead of just 6.270 and sleeping! I feel very happy that my team got so far in the

Finals. It was definitely a fun experience (when one wasn’t totally stressed out about completing the robot). I learned a lot about the inwards of a team

And how to work under some pressure! My last parting words: May the torque be with you! ~Marj