Archive for the 'FIRST FRC' Category

Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Team 1717

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on November 24, 2008
in FIRST FRC
. 0 Comments

This video is the first in a series of videos I will be releasing over the next couple of months related to my trip to Atlanta for the 2008 FIRST Robotic Championship. I took a lot of video there and I don’t want it to sit on my hard drive. Instead, I want to make sure the enthusiasm, excitement and craziness of the competition is shown so that new mentors can be motivated to help the next generation of engineers and scientists waiting in the wings.

From Noozhawk:

The Dos Pueblos High School Engineering Academy‘s Robotics Team came in second in its division, losing only to the team that went on to capture the overall title. There were 86 teams in the division from all over the world, including Israel and Canada. There were 340 teams in the competition.

All told, researching, developing and building the robot cost around $13,000, which was covered by and large by the team’s nine local sponsors: Afar Communications, ATK, Flir Systems, Impulse Internet Services, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), National Security Technologies, Raytheon, Renco and Valley Precision Products.

This year’s Team 1717 members are Alex Adams, Meha Agrawal, Daniel Barrett, Erika Bildsten, Will Campbell, Kevin Cheng, Scott Cook, Kieran Dunne, Sahar El Abbadi, Erika Eskenazi, Omar Gonzalez, Val Harbunou, Ricky Hayes, Jasper Jacobs, Wei Jiang, Trevor Johnson, Robert Kim, Matt Logan, Stephen MacFarlane, Scott Martinis, Joseph McDaniel, Zak McFarland, James McKinny, Michael Reveles, Sam Ridgeway, J.R. Riggs, Nico Ruvalcaba, Natalie Schauser, Melody Tan, Daniel Turvey, Wei Wu and Xuyang Zhang.

New FIRST robotics controller - Interviews and Opinions

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on May 26, 2008
in FIRST FRC, LabVIEW and Robotics
. 0 Comments

The big announcement this year at the FIRST robotics finals in Atlanta was the new robot controller from National Instruments. This new controller called cRIO runs a real-time OS and can be programmed using LabVIEW. The power of this new technology will open the door for new and more interesting challenges for future FIRST competitions.One area that is underdeveloped in the FRC category of the competition is the autonomous mode. This is in contrast to FLL which is mostly autonomous. Hopefully we will see some interesting games ahead.

In this video VI Shots interviews Ray Almgren who leads the worldwide academic relations program for National Instruments. We also interview several mentors and students to get their feedback on this change in direction for next years competition. Teams 2023, 1739, 47, 107 and 2053 are featured.

Photo taken by Deirdre of my interview with Ray Almgren

Are you on a team? What’s your opinion on the new hardware and LabVIEW?

NITRO - Ball shooting cRIO powered FIRST Robotics demo bot

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on May 18, 2008
in FIRST FRC
. 1 Comment



Another video taken at the FIRST final competition of 2008 in Atlanta. NI built a robot called NITRO to demonstrate the powerful capabilities of the new cRIO controller that will be used by the competition teams this year.

In addition to a cool ball shooting mode, NITRO has some advanced image analysis capabilities. Here we see it doing some pattern recognition and executing autonomous moves based on the image viewed.

What is not shown in the video is the ability to execute a specific move just by drawing a series of segmented lines in the provided dashboard application and then transmitting them to the bot. A huge improvement over last year.

The ability of the teams to take advantage of the power of LabVIEW graphical programming is really going to be an asset.

Technical overview of cRIO (Compact RIO) controller used in 2009 FRC competition

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on April 29, 2008
in FIRST FRC
. 1 Comment

This video highlights the new Compact RIO hardware that will be used as the controller for the 2009 FIRST robotics competition in the FRC category.

National Instruments had a booth close to the pits at the 2008 FRC final championship in Atlanta. They built several robots demonstrating the capabilities of the new controller. One of the robots is shown here and the various components of the control hardware are explained.

Resources:

FIRST Selects National Instruments CompactRIO for Next-Generation Robot Control System

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on April 17, 2008
in FIRST FRC
. 4 Comments

“FIRST has selected the National Instruments CompactRIO embedded control platform as its next-generation FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot controller. With this platform, high school students will create advanced robots starting in the 2009 FIRST season. Students can program their robots based on CompactRIO in either NI LabVIEW graphical programming software or the ANSI C language.” National Instruments announced at the 08′ FIRST Championship in Atlanta, Georgia today.

I’m here in Atlanta today covering the FIRST Championship. Todays announcement from National Instruments and FIRST is breathing new life into the successful robotics competition. Everyone is excited about using the new hardware and even more excited at the chance to use LabVIEW as the programming language. I want to stress that this is a multimillion dollar donation of materials over the next five years to FIRST to provide the CompactRIO system to participating teams. Several key technology suppliers have collaborated with NI to provide the components required to build the CompactRIO control system, including Analog Devices, Boston Engineering, ChipX, Dove Electronics, Freescale, MSI, Texas Instruments, TTI, Westak, Wind River, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Xilinx.

Quoting NI’s official press release:

“Our goal is to have a FIRST team in every high school and to change the culture in our communities to celebrate excellence in science and engineering the same way we celebrate sports,” said Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST and president of DEKA Research & Development Corporation. “It’s the support of partners like NI that is helping FIRST make that goal a reality.”

FIRST engages and encourages students to discover the excitement of science and engineering through a range of robotics competitions including Junior FIRST LEGO League, FIRST LEGO League, FIRST Technical Challenge and FIRST Robotics Competition. With the partnership between NI, LEGO and FIRST, 150,000 students in all FIRST competitions will have access to a progressive programming platform starting with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT-G and continuing through NI LabVIEW. This robotics software continuum introduces students to age-appropriate technology in an exciting, hands-on learning environment.

“We’ve chosen to partner with FIRST because we believe the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) program will have a substantial impact in creating more scientists and engineers” said Ray Almgren, vice president of Academic Relations at National Instruments. “By adding CompactRIO and LabVIEW to the robotics platform of their competition, FIRST will increase the technical capabilities of the teams’ robots while making the programming more accessible to a much larger and diverse group of students because of the ease of use and productivity in NI LabVIEW graphical programming.”

I’ve taken many cool videos of the new hardware already being used in several robots that NI put together to demonstrate the power of the new tools. I promise to post the videos as soon as they become available. :-)

The new CompactRIO is labeled the NI cRIO-FRC with the following specs:

· 400 MHz PPC
· 64 MB System Memory
· 128 MB Nonvolatile Storage
· 2M Gate FPGA
· 8 C Series I/O Ports
· RS-232 Serial Port
· Dual 10/100 Ethernet Ports
· VxWorks Operating System
· 19V-30V Input Voltage

You can plug in several modules to the cRIO base but the ones supplied are:

NI 9401: 8 Ch, 5 V/TTL High-Speed Bidirectional Digital I/O Module

· 8-channel, 100 ns ultrahigh-speed digital I/O
· 5 V/TTL, sinking/sourcing digital I/O
· -40 to 70 °C operating range
· Industry-standard 25-pin D-Sub connector
· Hot-swappable operation
· Bidirectional, configurable by nibble (4 bits)

NI 9201: 8-Ch, ±10 V, 500 kS/s, 12-Bit Analog Input Module, C Series

· 8 analog inputs, ±10 V input range
· 500 kS/s aggregate sampling rate
· 12-bit resolution, single-ended inputs, screw terminal or D-Sub connectors
· Hot-swappable operation; overvoltage protection; isolation
· NIST-traceable calibration
· -40 to 70 °C operating range

NI 9472: 8-Channel 24 V Logic, 100 µs, Sourcing Digital Output Module

· 8-channel, 100 µs digital output
· D-Sub or screw-terminal connector options
· 6 to 30 V range, sourcing digital output
· -40 to 70 °C operating range
· Hot-swappable operation
· Extreme industrial certifications/ratings

In addition to the cRIO, there are several other breakout boards and modules included. More details of the hardware with photos can be found here:
FRC Control System - Technical Specs

In order to program the robot, students will have a choice of C or LabVIEW. On the C side students will be able to use software developed by WPI. An excerpt from WPI’s press release:

Teams using C/C++ will base their code on a programming library developed by Brad Miller, associate director of WPI’s Robotics Resource Center, and a team of WPI faculty members and students. Called WPILib, the library includes a wide range of modules that will enable high school students to easily and quickly develop programs that take full advantage of the enhanced power of the new control system. Miller says WPILib will be released as an open-source software project, giving teams the ability to develop their own code and share it with the FIRST community.

On the LabVIEW side there will be a special palette of VIs that will assist students to help them quickly get up and running with the motion control and sensors of their robot. What exactly these VIs do has not been officially announced yet however NI has a hands-on demonstration here of LabVIEW and the new VIs. Students have been streaming here to try it out (and get a free t-shirt of course). I saw several students who have never even seen LabVIEW before literally grab the mouse lay down some code and start moving motors via a joystick in like 5 minutes! I have no doubt that LabVIEW will be a huge success with the new FRC teams.

Keep reading future posts as I bring more news and video from the FRC competition and also FTC and FLL.

Question for my readers who use LabVIEW professionally. Does this announcement motivate you to become a mentor in your local FRC team?

Additional Resources: