Origins

The 2008 competition marks our third year of participation in FIRST robotics. Our club was officially started in the fall of the '05 school year, with nearly 20 members. Mr. Bruneau, a long time mentor of Team 768 – Woodlawn High School and founder of Team 1727, immediately held elections for leadership positions among the students. Positions included president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and others who set goals for the upcoming year. We began working with Vex kits because of their ease of use and how well they scale up to FRC. In November, we sent out over one hundred letters to technology and engineering related companies in the local area asking for donations and sponsorship. Our efforts were met with huge success: we received thousands of dollars from numerous sponsors, valuable mentors, and formed powerful relations with companies.

AAI Corporation answered the call and invited us to take a tour of their facilities in early December and showed us the challenges engineers face. At the end of the tour, we presented our goals for the year and where we needed aid. AAI pledged their support of our program, and provided financial and mentor support.

By mid-December, we held our first fundraising dinner with Carrabba’s Italian Grill. The dinner allowed the team to bring together the local community, present our goals for the upcoming year, and show the project we had undertaken.

Rookie Competition

On January 7, 2006 FIRST announced Aim High. Aim High is a mix of soccer and basketball where robots have to pick up balls and either shoot or roll them into goals. We decided to challenge ourselves and create a device to shoot into the three point goal. Once preliminary tests showed pneumatics and springs were not feasible, it became clear that the best method would be a device similar to a baseball pitching machine. To gather balls off of the ground, we created a conveyor belt system using rollers made from pool noodles and a conveyor belt. The system was later duplicated in order to raise the balls from a holding tank to a ramp then to the shooter. AAI engineers came several days a week to offer their knowledge, skills, and machinery to help build the devices. Even though we lacked experience as a whole, we were able to plan, build, and integrate all of the devices on to the robot.  In addition to the help we received from AAI, we received a lot of support from the parents in our club. Especially in the last weeks of the build season, the team came together and worked effectively with mentors to complete the project. The entire robot was completed slightly behind schedule but with just enough time to test.

After completing the robot, the competitions were upon us before we knew it. The Pittsburgh regional was a true trial by fire. With only 23 teams participating, we had the opportunity to participate in many matches. However, this situation gave us little time to improve on our robot between matches, especially in the autonomous mode. Despite our tribulations, we caught the eye of the other teams and the judges: we were the sixth team selected as an alliance partner and won Rookie All Star and Best Website. We then took our robot to the Chesapeake regional competition, where we found many more teams and were able to apply our experience from Pittsburgh. Again, we left this competition proud of our additional accomplishments.

With our Rookie All Star award, we made it to the Championship in Atlanta. The sheer size of the Championship astounded us, with over three hundred teams competing and three events going on simultaneously. Our robot performed well, but we were not ranked high in the ranks at the end of the day. We come home with a new outlook on FIRST, and new ambitions.

Outreach

Over the summer, we hosted a robotics camp for middle school student in tandem with Johns Hopkins University. To spread the image of Dulaney Robotics, we have agreed to participate in off-season showcases. In the spring of 2006, we demonstrated the robot at area elementary schools and the Rockwell Automations Show at the Baltimore Convention Center.

We have taken the initiative to help create an interdependent community in the greater Baltimore area: the FIRST Baltimore Area Alliance. Nine teams from both Baltimore County and City participate. Our mission is to share information, fundraising efforts, and eventually, team training. BAA obtained status as a 501(3)c organization through generous sponsorship by the Henry Foundation. We kicked off the 2007 build season with a major BAA fundraising dinner sponsored by Outback Steakhouse. Many team members, mentors, sponsors, and educators attended the event and teams raised an average of $1000 each. In 2008 we again hosted Outback Night with nine teams attending with total income for the night around $10000.

We have expanded our community outreach programs to include several all-day workshops using NXT and VEX robotics systems. Eight middle and elementary schools within our community received flyers about the workshops, and groups of 24 students enthusiastically participated in building robots to compete in mini-competitions designed by Rex members. Through our various fundraisers we have demonstrated our robot at Sam's Club, and showed videos and distributed FIRST literature at restaurants like Andy Nelson’s BBQ and Yamato Sushi, and businesses like Barnes & Noble and Greetings & Readings.

We again collaborated with Carrabba's  Italian Grill to host Carrabba’s night at our school. Our goal with the dinner was not only to help fund our club, but to get the public more interested in FIRST. Several events took place during dinner including the US FIRST Rack ‘N’ Roll competition video, robot displays, demonstrations, Vex prototypes, and we honored our AAI mentors with lavish awards.

Rack ‘N’ Roll

The 2007 Rack ‘N’ Roll game presented quite a challenge for our team. As a student-led team, organizing and managing our sizeable membership has been a learning experience. We decided to attempt to score points both through the rack and lifting alliance partners. We split our team into subgroups to work on different components including drive train, ramp, arm, electrical, and programming. We chose to have both offensive and defensive capabilities powered by a six-wheel drive train with two-speed gearboxes. We used traction wheels but elevated the two center wheels allowing us to turn on a dime. We initially had two competing design ideas for the arm and device. Separate teams worked on their respective designs, and in the end we chose the successful design. The ramps utilized pneumatics to elevate alliance partners 13 inches off the ground.

We put our Rack ‘N’ Roll robot to it’s first major test at the Trenton Regional Competition. From March 1st to 3rd, we competed against some of the finest teams in the nation. We learned a lot about the competition and what our robot was capable of, and ultimately made major design changes while at the competition. We had to scrap the rotary arm design, and remove the ramps due to difficulties. We did not place well in the final competition, but walked home with the Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byer’s Entrepreneurship Award after presenting the first iteration of the Rex Report to judges.

Just two weeks later, we walked into the Chesapeake Regional. From day one our enthusiasm was infectious, and the robot could not have performed better. We presented a revised Rex Report to judges, and they kept coming back to our pit to find out more. We made it to the finals, but were eliminated. However, we won the Chairman’s Award, and we became the first team in Maryland to do so. With our Chairman’s Award as our ticket we competed at the Atlanta Championship, but didn’t place high in the rankings again.

Summer Involvement

Over the summer we hosted another robotics summer camp program for 45 kids, based around the Boebot kits. We designed a several competitions for campers to compete in and we were featured on the BCPS website. In early August as part of the Baltimore Area Alliance we helped setup and run the Battle O’ Baltimore – Baltimore’s first off season competition.

With the start of the 2007-2008 school year, we wanted to focus on technical excellence. We called our mentors in early to form a cohesive training schedule that would cover many aspects of robot build, including leadership, machining, safety, pneumatics, sensors and more. In addition we attended the BAA Training Day, and our students taught several of the 12 classes.

We put our Rack 'N' Roll robot through its final paces at the Duel on the Delaware where we introduced new team members to the competition atmosphere.

Kicking it into Overdrive

The robot utilizes double wide 80/20 members that are 4.5' tall and allow the bottom of the claw to tower at 7 feet maximum. The 80/20 and claw is driven via chain and wire rope, respectively. The claw uses fiberglass joined by aluminum blocks. This makes the claw flexible preventing damage during competition, yet the fiberglass is stiff enough to maintain rigidity when picking up the ball. The Claw features a 700mm infrared sensor used to pick up the ball automatically, eliminating human error.


The drive system is simple, yet effective. It utilizes two 8" IFI traction wheels mated to Banebot 12:1 planetary gearboxes with CIM motors in the front and two freewheeling Andy Mark 8" omni-wheels in the rear. The electronics portion of the robot is a two-tiered design that allows for easy access to key components.

For our first competition in Chesapeake, the competition ran like clockwork. Unfortunately, our robot didn't. During the course of the competition, we ran into a wide range of problems. Near the end of the regional, we largely ironed out the issues with the robot. We did not place well however, coming in 45th of the 60 teams competing, but we walked away proud with the Johnson and Johnson Gracious Professionalism Award, and Team 75's Safety Award.

From March 27th to the 29th, we competed at the Philadelphia Regional. This time around our robot performed much better, and we managed to place 22nd out of the 44 teams competing. We were chosen in the finals by alliance captain Team 357 - Royal Assault along with Team 709 - Femme Tech Fatale. Although we were eliminated in the quarter finals, the matches were quite fun and intense. We walked home with three safety awards from other teams, the prize for Team 1885's First FIRST Trivia Challenge, and Best Website. Overall, Philadelphia was a great event, and we would like to thank everyone involved in setting it up, Drexel University, and of course Team 357 for choosing us, and Team 709 for being a great alliance partner!