Meetings

Meeting #1

Our first meeting of the 2012-2013 season took place on Tuesday, August 28th 2012 from 7 to 9 pm at EE. Here are the slides we reviewed during the meeting:

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Meeting #2

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On Saturday Sept 1st, 2012 we will meet at Lone Star College Montgomery campus in Building A (The Commons). Here is a map.

Please park in spots not marked reserved for staff or faculty.

Please arrive at 9:15 am in Building A and wear a royal blue t shirt with no or minimal logos.

If you are a returning member, please wear last year’s royal blue team t-shirt.

We will participate in the Kick-Off event in the morning, have lunch on our own, and meet at EE (directions and map below) at 1:15 pm that afternoon. We will continue meeting at EE until 4:00 pm.

Please review this spreadsheet for the commitments youth and their parents have made to complete Kick Off Day tasks on Saturday, Sept 1st.

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Extraordinary Education is located at 9522 Carraway Lane Magnolia, Texas 77354. This is just west of The Woodlands on FM 2978. Here is Googlemap link (link is http://goo.gl/maps/ndGYQ). We will meet in the tan/brown portable building across the driveway from the main house at Extraordinary Education.

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Technology Team meeting notes (Captured and typed by Ciara Tollefsrud. Thanks Ciara!)

Tuesday 09/04/12

Things done:

• Brainstormed for ways to get the robot up the pole
• Went over goals and timeline
• Brainstormed for other parts of the robot (gripper, arm, device for securing items/getting points, etc.)
• Went over what materials we have and looked at materials

 Action items:

Get some steel similar to the pole in the course to test wheels on

Homework is to think of separate solutions to score with the t-structure, cargo balls, solar panels, and habitation module so that we can find a way to tie them all together in future meetings.

 Agreements:

We agreed to use wheels as the primary design, pulleys as the secondary design, and gears as the tertiary design.

 Ideas/Notes that were brought up about parts of the robot during the meeting: 

Using a wide gear – exact width of the bar or wider

Use pulley as a backup

Wheels on the back of the pole, gears on the front with the gaps in the pole

Need to find how to completely control string for pulley

Possible things to use for traction on wheels: friction tape, inner tube

Make robot as lightweight as possible

2-fingered arm with rubber grippers

Something to contain cargo balls while carrying solar panel/t-structure/habitation module

3-pronged gripper

Fork with 3 prongs

Disposable container to transport objects

Thursday 09/06/12 

What we got done:

Brainstormed more for the parts of the robot

Look at the mock up of the course

Look at the tools we have

Brainstorm more

Action Items:

None 

Agreements:

None 

Ideas/Notes:

Base made out of PVC and Plexiglas

Longer rectangle chassis

Rotating arm with two joints – one at body and one halfway down arm

2-finger grippers with rubber and adjustable pressure

3-fingered version on above

Triangle-shaped body

Wheels clamped onto the sides of the pole

Use the least amount of motors as possible

Using the second motor as backup with pulley

1 motor for wheels and pulley

Use gears and wheels

PVC and Plexiglas skeleton for chassis

Flat rectangle-shaped chassis

Thick Plexiglas rather than light

3-jointed, telescoping arm

Arm screws out from telescope

2-jointed arm

2 pronged gripper

Rounded claw with rubber grippers

3 pronged, although not a claw, rotating gripper

Parenthesis-shaped gripper with rubber bands

2-pronged bucket gripper

As short of an arm as possible – max 5 ft.

Presentation Team Tryouts Saturday, September 8th

The rubric for evaluating participants:

Presentation Team Try-out Sheet
Name of speaker:
Date:
Presentation Skills
___ of 10 Hand Gestures
___ of 10 Eye Contact
___ of 10 Confidence / Stage presence
___ of 10 ProjectionStructure
___ of 10 Well defined main points
___ of 10 Answers the prompt clearlyNotes: