:Soupe du Jour

The requirements:

We are to build a robot (no larger than 12″ by 12″) out of only the 9797 parts and three exceptions. The matches last 2 minutes before a compulsory restart, unless one robot is disabled or pushed out of the ring, which is in reality a 3 foot square.

Research:

Site 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRY6Y8OrZFk

This video was of an actual NXT Sumo Bot competition in which every single robot used some kind of angled blade to try and flip the other robot over. I think that we should probably implement some sort of design like that one. We should also try to keep the “blade” as close as possible to the ground in order to help during shoving contests.

Site 2: http://www.robotcombat.com/teamnightmare.html

This site had a lot of real life combat robots from the show Battle Bots. This meant that we could see things that actually worked but many of them couldn’t really be applied in NXT format. However the blade bots were still successful and seem like they will be quite promising. It was very inspiring and sweet to watch, tho.

Site 3: http://www.battlebricks.com/video.jsp

This site was probably the coolest and most helpful of them all. the theory that the angled bots work best was supported by the videos here, but other types of robots were also shown and experimented, with them all eventually failing to the bladebot. We will definitely make a bladebot now.

Design Concept:

We are going to build a robot with a low center of gravity and a blade in the front, but also will try to incorporate some sort of treadmill effect into the blade to help robots become flipped over.  the blade will be in front of the robot, which will use a light sensor to detect the edge of the ring and stay inside it. This will be difficult but possible to do with the restricted parts list. That is all.

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That test was long but not overly intense but still mentally taxing. I just want to chill. That’s whassup.

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Introduction to Project Management: I have no idea what it is referring to at all

General Networking: I would like to learn more about this as a general concept

Spreadsheets, Modeling and Simulation: I know very little about this technology

For everything else the order doesn’t really matter to me.

P.S. CAN WE DO WIKIPEDIA RACES FOR OUR FINAL????????

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Issue: Oil from a broken oil rig is seeping into the ocean, spreading along the surface, and washing up on shorelines. This is having a tremendous negative effect on ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and causing potentially irreparable damage.

Information Technology: Weather simulations can be used to try and predict where the oil spill will spread to based upon currents, tides, wind, pressure changes, and other factors. This prediction will help clean-up crews to direct their efforts with maximum effect and efficiency.

Possible solutions: Use oil booms to contain the oil spilled into a specific location, therein stopping further damage. Try controlled burnings to get rid of oil on the surface before it reaches the shore. Alternatively, clean-up could be done on-site wherever damage occurs.

Link

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Voila! Here is the presentation:

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1. Processors are created by layering followed by etching.
2. This etching is also used in photography! Wow.
3. The “fab” or fabrication rooms are kept 10-15 million times cleaner than surgical rooms.
4. Any stray particle can ruin a chip.
5. Silicon is a crystal that is grown commercially.
6. Silicon is sliced with a diamond saw in order to allow it to be cut very thinly.
7. Chips usually take a couple months to be made from start to finish.
8. During production, chemicals and light gates make the processors.
9. In microprocessors, a nanometer (nm) measurement refers to the width of the gate or transistor part.
10. Transistors have three parts: the source, the gate, and the drain.
11. Masks are made in quartz and are a significantly larger than the chip being made, as light is then focused down to produce the chip.
12. Average success rate of chip production, or yield, is usually (or at least is at intel) in the high nineties percentage-wise.
13. A wafer has an large amount of chips on it that must be broken up.
14. Chip wafers are cut by scratching the glass surface along the “scribe lane” and then broken up. Only error-free chips go on to the next stage.
15. Chips are connected with gold wires.
16. It costs more to make the gold wire as small as it is than to make it out of pure gold.
17. Right now, 750,000 transistors can fit on the intersection point of two human hairs.
18. Silicon is used because when exposed to oxygen it creates Silicon Dioxide which is glass!
19. Chips are designed by architects! Among other things…
20. The whit clean suits used when making chips are called bunny suits.

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Aperture: the opening in a camera that lets light into the eye.

Exposure: the amount of light that is subjected to the camera and the duration for which the camera is exposed. The relationship between light and time.

Shutter (speed): the time component of exposure.

1 Stop: an increment of adjusting the shutter speed, measured logarithmically using exponents of a constant. The “stop” is the exponent part.

ISO: the sensitivity rating of film. “Fast” film has a rating of about 1600 and is best for low light conditions, where as “slow” film has a rating of 50 and is more appropriate for full daylight. “Medium” film is appropriate for general use and ahas a rating of about 400. Slower ISO makes more detail.

Depth of Field: distance in front of and behind the subject that appears to be in focus.

Focal Length: how close the camera seems to be the subject. How much other stuff is included around the subject. Higher number has less background information, and a smaller Field of View.

• Wide: a lens with a focal length of < 35mm
• Normal: a lens with a focal length of 35mm-65mm
• Telephoto: a lens with a focal lenth of > 65 mm

Field of View: the degree/angle of vision that can be seen or taken in by the camera.

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Here is the slideshow I made in class! It has a cat theme, in case you were wondering, and shows examples of photographs that use each of the different listed photographic principles. Enjoy!

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I discovered that by re-exporting the data as a .csv file and making some changes to the data set i was able to successfully re-populate the database without going back in and entering everything all over again. This saved me a great amount of time and energy which I am very grateful for.

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I created a set of search scripts that should work in the database, and had a few minor setbacks when I encountered a major problem: the search script did not have permission to access the database in order to acquire the information. This is not at all good. I hope I can resolve it quickly.

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