Functioning Robots and Double Dream Hands

Today was a great day! After a great relaxation session drinking pearl tea and watching The Office we were all ready to get to work. Some team members went to IDEO to pick up the parts of the arm and the programming go to work wiring up the chassis. Caroline, Gadre, and Katie led the bumper making, and they are almost done! The bumpers look beautiful (We went with reversible ones and got numbers printed on the fabric. Other team members worked on modifying last year's cart to work for this year's robot. I believe they are also looking into adding some storage areas for batteries, gloves and other things to the cart.

We also found out yesterday that SVR is actually a bag and tag event for us. This means that instead of shipping the robot on Tuesday we will actually put it in a giant plastic bag and keep it at at school until the competition. We aren't allowed to open it except for a total of six hours the week before SVR, which is great because it means that we will be able to get in a little extra practice.

But the best part about today was that we got the robot up and running! We only have the motors for the drivetrain set up, but the first time we tested the code we were driving! And to make it even better this was all wireless! We had to do a little bit of fine tuning to get some things worked out, but we are making great progress.

Hopefully we will be able to finish a majority of the robot tomorrow so that we can attend the practice matches at NASA.

This will be a busy weekend, but we are off to a great start! Also, check out the new pictures added to the Picasa.

PS. The title of the video gives a hint to a little something special we have been up to...