Why I Love my Robotics Class

Every year in robotics (which is a for-credit class, as well as a FIRST Robotics Team), we spend a few months splitting into subteams and working on "team-building" activities, which are also engineering challenges. Then, as we approach the build season (the six weeks between the day we're told the challenge to the day we have to ship the robot off to competition) we bring in the "community volunteers" - volunteers, usually ex-team members going to Virginia Tech or the local community college, who help us during build season because the VT kids who take the tech-elective class, from which we draw our other mentors, don't usually have any FIRST experience. This year we combined the former with the latter in a beautiful competition. We split up into two semi-random teams ("this side of the room is 'Team Mike,' this is 'Team Bobby.'") to build... pumpkin trebuchets. This was last Wednesday.

We had 1.5 hours last week and 2 hours this week to build and fire our trebuchets. We were allowed to use anything in the shop. Considering the time constraints, I'd say we did a pretty damn good job. Our trebuchet's best shot landed fifteen meters away from the starting point. Not terribly impressive, but it was exhilarating that it: 1. didn't collapse under its own weight (or the weight of the 150-lb trash-can full of water that was used to propel the pumpkin), and 2. didn't just drop the pumpkin. We lost the competition overall, but the other team really took the management up on their offer of "anything in the shop," and broke out the box we usually ship the robot in. I took pictures for a community volunteer and personal friend, who couldn't be there the second night.

So, here are some pics of Team Mike's trebuchet (built mostly by Evan Billingsley, who is removing the blocks in the second picture; Andrew Gotow, holding the flashlight in the third shot; Sam Loeschen, standing off to the side in the first shot; and myself, behind the camera in all five pictures. others also contributed, but I'm afraid to say I don't know at least one of your names.):

Setting up for the final run

Evan, risking severe bruising


Setting up the second shot, the one that flew furthest. The cooler is also full of water.

Building it, in the shop.

The masking tape was solely a joke about the poor construction, and not actually structurally significant. As far as I know.

Anyway, what I guess I mean to say is that this class has taught every one of its graduates to think outside the box and have fun with engineering projects. It has literally changed the course of my life.

Side note (and fairly unrelated): Up until this challenge, I've been working on another project this year, titled Development of Configurable Robotics Platforms for Cost-Effective Secondary Education. This is a student research project that Zach Cantrell and I are doing separate from the rest of the class, mostly to spare us from doing these projects for the third or fourth time. We're submitting it to the Intel Science and Engineering Fair and will be releasing CAD files and plans under a free license online. Anyway, that's my long excuse for not knowing your name if I forgot you. This means you, Zeke or Zack or some other name like that, and you, girl with dark hair and black converse in the second-to-last shot.

Found my old PONG program

In preparation for my MIT application, which is due in less than two weeks, I was snooping around some old files (like 7th grade old, on my 10GB hard drive from that era). I completed my objective: I rediscovered a word document containing a transcribed version of the PONG clone I wrote back then. It's shorter than I remembered (about 55 lines), but somehow also uglier. So I cleaned it up a little and rearranged some of it so it doesn't redraw the screen three times. Now it's 10 lines shorter. It's very simple, but I remember it as my first foray into the world of code. It's hard for me to believe that 7th grade was only five years ago. Anyway, here's the cleaned-up version in a text file (because I don't have a transfer cable or any of that fancy stuff). Enjoy it. I'm not entirely sure whether you can license TI-BASIC code, but whatever portion of that output is legally mine you can reproduce and change so long as you release the result with the same conditions.

The Case of the Gibberish Grades

Last week Blacksburg High School gave out interim grade reports. This is done once each grading period, halfway through. This was the first, and this year we've "upgraded" to a new system that allows the teachers to use the same program for attendance and grades. Well, some teachers were having an issue where the printer spat out gibberish. One of my teachers, as a joke, gave us each one of these apparently indecipherable grade reports. Mine (actually not mine, but a friend's, since I can't find mine) looked like this:

The next period, English, I was looking over it for fun to see whether it was, in fact, decipherable. The first thing I noticed was that, where there were capital letters on the phony report card, there were also capital letters on the real one. For instance, in the column marked "Dbufhpsz," the 'gibberish' says "HFOFSBM." The real report card says "GENERAL." You may notice, as I did, that there are the same number of letters, and that 'E's on the real card are represented by 'F's on the phony one. From here, upon slightly more detailed inspection, it was apparent that it was some sort of accidental Caesar cipher in which each character was shifted by one. This was backed up by the abundance of exclamation points, which appeared wherever there would have been a 'space' character on a real progress report. I happened to remember that the exclamation point was #33 on the ASCII table and space was #32. I'm not sure what to do with this information. I could bring it to the attention of the school's technical department, but I'm not really sure what they would be able to do about it, or if they're even in contact with the writers of the software. Any suggestions?

First full week of school is over

I've given up the pretense of updating this regularly. It's been over six months. But I'm starting my senior year, and the college application process is also revving up its engines, ready to pummel the puny, sedan-sized car that's representing my brain in this metaphor. All goofiness aside, the MIT online application asks for a link to a website where you showcase things you have made. So I've decided to clean this up again and start posting whenever I happen to remember, with photos and videos and other bits from my life. That's right MIT, and any personnel thereof, you have inspired me to start blogging again. To start off on a good note (and to make absolutely certain that this isn't just one of those "hey! just checking in! nice weather lately..." posts), here's a video of our robot last year in the semifinals of the FIRST Robotics VCU regional: