“Burbank Young Professionals: Grill and Give,” Johnny Carson Park, Summer, Off-season, 2023
Hot. But we had popsicles so it was pretty sweet.
Besides that, we had a nice time hanging out with one another, meeting with important Burbank figures such as the Boys and Girls Club, Department of Parks and Rec., and California Senators Portantino and Menjivar while doing demos with 2022’s Kitty.
Note to future us: don’t do demos anywhere near grass… cleaning it out of transmissions isn’t fun.
All in all, thank you to the Burbank Young Professionals for having us! We look forward to working with more organizations to promote robotics across Burbank!
“STEM Lego Robo Camp,” Central Library, Summer, Off-season, 2023
After weeks of planning and pulling people from within and outside our team, we’ve reached the conclusion of our Lego Robo Camp!
Returning in person was a challenge, but our team pushed through in developing updated curriculums for Mindstorms and OnShape CAD as well as a new curriculum for 3D Printing.
With over 30 students and 20 mentors, every team competed with a unique robot of their own, many with fun design details (so many swords…) or songs (one Rickrolled us…) to present to our judge.
In the flurry of action, young students and our older students alike experienced how overcoming the challenges of mentorship can be rewarding, both professionally and personally.
Thank you to all the mentors, people behind the scenes, and extra hands from friends of 980 and 1148 Harvard Westlake Robotics for all their hard work!
“What’s happening with the ThunderBots?,” Burbank High STEAM Lab, Summer, Off-season, 2023
For a few months now, we’ve had a nice “not-a-box” box tucked away in controls that we had to ignore to focus on working through the rest of the season with Frankie. However… now we can talk about it as a “box” box!
People… we’ve got swerve drive!
For those who don’t know what swerve drive is, imagine a swivel chair and how it can go anywhere at any time — that’s what our robot can now do. Compared to our standard tank drive, we’ve a major challenge ahead of us when trying to figure out how this works.
No more rectangular frame. Individual swerve modules mounted to corners. And finally an electronics board. We’re now ready to move onto the hard part: coding.
Surprisingly, we already have a name: Prototype-Swervebot 1, aka, PS1.
Throughout the rest of the build space, we’ve been working on a major redesign, using summer to not have to worry about people going in and out during the school year. In Fabrication, we completely rearranged our shop, creating a dedicated storage space and different project tables. Business and Design have switched spaces, moving Design into the newly rearranged (former) Business office and Business into the larger area of the build space. Although Controls has not been the victim of a major redesign yet, there are talks of switching up the room’s layout while they work outside for the electronics board on PS1.
All in all, we’ve had our hands full with getting things done during the past few months as we prepare for the new school year, a more efficient work cycle, and fall off-season competitions.
“Aerospace Valley Regional”, Eastside High School, Lancaster, March 29 to April 1, Season, 2023
Take a moment to breathe. In and out. Okay. Let’s get into it.
Frankie before AVRRecollecting ourselves, we put Frankie’s forearm back on, tightened some bolts, and replaced it’s grabber with a simplified version with compliant wheels (for grip, not to spin), we were ready to send Frankie back into battle with a renewed sense of (albeit, wary) confidence.
Lancaster. Bright and early, and I do mean early early. There was freezing wind and snow on the ground. Everybody half asleep as they pile into the venue building, some of the lucky ones with coffee in their hand. Competition starts relatively smoothly, going to practice matches, programming new arm positions, and new autonomous modes. Warming up (both literally and figuratively), the drivers began getting used to Frankie’s… eccentricities… critical to our success.
sheared axle #?Delightfully, no motors were smoked this time… But then, the weight of the arm put too much stress on the solid aluminum shoulder hex shaft, sheering it clean in half. Not one — or two— but three of them clean in half. As the competition wore on, Frankie became more… eccentric… as the drive team became better, canceling one another out.
…the result of a very angry boltFinishing out the competition in 18/36, it’s likely we would have been picked for eliminations if our drivetrain was not being weird the last two matches and we didn’t have to go to lunch with our robot on its side, the drivetrain half off, and our flag sticking out the top.
However, after some time to fix everything up, it ran smoothly in the nick of time. When one member of the final alliances, the 1197 Torbots, needed more time to fix their robot, we were ready to step up for 3512 Spartatronics and 2659 RoboWarriors. Despite getting a cone (or a few) stuck under us, we managed to even out the triple balance and help win the match.
Undead as ever, Frankie survived and made it out of competition in one piece with no further repairs necessary. Greater than the sum of its parts, we are proud to have Frankie in our history as a testament to perseverance through some… eccentri- (Ok you took out “jank” everywhere I used it and put in that super long word that was just a nice way of saying “janky!” Leave at least this last one!) … … …
Jankiness.
— Luci, Captain of Team 980 (with ‘assistance’ from Alex, Controls Mentor of Team 980) Kian 😀 David & David Mr. Pig and Benny Frankie… meant to do that
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