March 16th was a practice day for the teams. Teams took turns going on the field to test out communication and practice driving. The Funky Monkeys took the first part of the day installing the shooter that had been left off of the robot during shipping for modifications. They also took time to test out all of the systems on the robot, including the pneumatics and ball intake system. After finishing up the final touches on the robot, the drive team took the Tail of the Monkey for a spin on the field. Unfortunately, in the middle of the match, the robot stopped responding and lost communications with the driver station. The same issue came up again in later trials. The software team attempted to solve the issue with the little time they had in the day. The team left as the pits closed, hoping that they had figured out a solution for the communication issues.

March 17th was the first day of Qualification Matches. The Tail of the Monkey took the stage in the third match of the day. After shooting its two hybrid balls, it was time for the tele-operated period. Ten seconds into the period, the robot stopped responding. Despite all of the work that was done the day before, the robot still had issues communicating with the field and the driver station. Fortunately, the Funky Monkeys and their alliance were still able to come up with a victory. The next four matches ended up playing very similarly to the first match. The Tail of the Monkey would score at least one of its two hybrid basketballs, but it would lose communication for about thirty seconds in the match. After regaining control, the drive team would score a couple more balls before going to balance on the bridge. Team 846, despite having these communication issues, was able to win the first five matches, and even hold the first seed position for a short period of time. However, in the last match of the day, the problem started to really show its affects. Again, the Tail of the Monkey failed to respond in the middle of the match. It had also failed to score any hybrid points. With the time lost to the communication issue, Team 846′s alliance was only able to score 4 points, while the opponents scored 9. At the end of the day, the Funky Monkeys had lost the first seed position, lost its undefeated record, and still had yet to solve the communication issue. However, during the awards ceremony, the team was pleasantly surprised when they were called upon as the winners of the regional Engineering Excellence Award. All of the hard work put into creating the logs documenting the team’s work on the shooter and other systems had paid off. The team went back to the hotel happy, but still uneasy, as the communication issue had yet to be resolved.

Day 3, March 18th had more Qualification Matches, as well as the Elimination Matches. While the software team continued to work with the FIRST FTAs to find a solution, the robot fared to be 1-1-0 in the day’s Qualification Matches. Finishing the seeding matches with a record of 6-2-0 despite communication issues, the team failed to place in the top eight, because they only had 12 Qualification Points. The Funky Monkeys were picked by the 8th alliance, as they joined forces with Team 694 and Team 3059 to take on the first seeded alliance, consisting of Teams 1676, 2168, and 329. In the first match, disaster struck. Even after putting in so much effort in the past three days, the Tail of the Monkey still lost communication with the driver station. Unable to move for much of the match, the eighth alliance fell short, with the score of 43-4. After much deliberation with the team’s alliance mates, the Funky Monkeys agreed to give up their spot in the alliance and called for a replacement team. For the Tail of the Monkey, the competition was over.

However, the competition was far from over for the rest of the crowd. Spectators cheered as they watched alliances battle it out for a spot in the Finals. In the Semi-Final round, the seventh-seed alliance upset the first-seed with its consistent hybrid mode shooting and an incredible ability to triple balance. This same alliance, consisting of Teams 1635, 522, and 125, used this same strategy to defeat its opponents in the finals to become the regional champions.

Team 846 had a solid performance at the New York City Regional. Even while being plagued with communication issues throughout the competition, the team was able to finish with a 6-3-0 record. The Funky Monkeys are excited and looking forward for their next competition at the Silicon Valley Regional, where they will compete against teams such as Team 254, last year’s World Champions. With nearly two weeks in between to work on solving the communication issues, the team is hoping to put on a better show without as many issues at SVR on March 29-31.

Some of us went to Michael C’s house to test out some of the paint. We tried out a couple different shades of yellow to see which color(s) would look best on our soon-to-come robot.

While all this was going on in room 612, Mr. Xie and Mr. G were giving lectures about software design. Mr. Xie went over drive train control. He talked about the differences between PID (proportional-integral-derivative) and Lead Lag control designs. Mr. G explained our current CAN Bus (Controller Area Network) system, and how information flows from the cRio to the 2-CAN, and then to the individual robot motors and parts. He also talked about our Jaguar speed controllers. Next, Mr. G went over some of the important points for newcoming programmers. This includes destroying previous commands, looking at previous years’ code, and learning from experienced programmers.

We didn’t finish all of the item on the agenda, because we ended up drifting to room 612 to get more work done. After a short lunch break, many of us returned to continue working. At the end of the day, the drivetrain was looking better and better. Only a few more tweaks left!

At night, we had, once again, a design meeting. First, Brian showed the team a new tasks system, called “Trac.” This is a system for keeping software projects on track, but we will be using it to keep track of the entire build process. Next, we went over interesting things that were found on Chief Delphi. One was a ball intake system that would give the robot more space to suck up balls (found by Miles). Currently, because of the bumper rules, robots would only have ~12 inches to suck the ball up. However, with this system, the balls in front of the robot would automatically be moved to the intake area by three sets of deployable rollers.

Then, we had a discussion about our robot design. We are still debating whether to have the robot’s shooter point forward or to the side. Pointing it to the side would make it easier to fine-tune when aiming, since we would be using the driving system. On the other hand, if it were pointed forward, we would need to aim by turning in place, which, for us, is not as precise. Also, we looked at good positions, or (as we like to call them) “sweet spots,” that we would like to shoot from. Ideally, we would need more than one zone where we can consistently score from, so opposing teams would have a harder time defending. Mr. Xie also brought up the idea of having a basket/hopper to allow other teams to feed us balls. However, some people had doubts, since other teams would probably not aim for us, and instead aim for the hoop. Also, the robot-to-robot interaction could easily lead to robot damage, whether it is from the fired ball or from a collision.

After the meeting, some of us played around with the bridge to get an idea of its physics and properties. We ended up trying to stay between “balanced” and “unbalanced”. It was fun.

At night, we were again at school. Funny how we seem to love school so much… We had our weekly Active Member’s Meeting (thus, the title of this entry). We talked about purchasing a team flag, the t-shirt and sweater designs, the upcoming spring newsletter, awards, and the trip to New York. More detailed notes can be found here. Interestingly enough, this meeting ended in just 89 minutes. Anyways, we were able to get much done in this short time period. Tomorrow, we will continue working on the robot design during the design meeting.