Team Meeting 10/30

     Today we presented some of our work at a Halloween carnival at our local elementary school.  A lot of people seemed to be interested in the robot particularly.  We also managed to get some work done between visitors, and now the robot can pretty consistently follow the closest black line to base.  Next, it'll hopefully be able to complete some missions on the other end of the table.

Team Meeting 10/24

     The robot is now working enough for us to really start to program.  We entirely removed the drag wheel in favor of a set of skids, and the wiggle almost entirely disappeared.  We almost have the robot to the far end of the table for one run, and are working on adjusting the second mission so that the stent won't run into the mechanical hand when we activate it.  Looks like we're finally on track, although I've said that before.
     We also demonstrated a machine of our own creation to a board of parents.  The catch: We are the machine.  So, we delegated parts (Lighter, fuse, gunpowder, boulder, building) and put on a performance complete with sound effects [sssssssssBOOM].  We also had to explain what our individual parts in the machine were and why they were important.  For example, "I'm a building and I'm important because when I get hit by the boulder I fall over and squash things,".  We received full marks, plus extra points for blowing things up.

BOOM!

Team Meeting 20/10

     Our robot is having issues!  We were looking forward to another day of programming, but just as we got started... the robot started to wiggle.  Okay, no big deal, the robot wiggles a little bit, right?  WRONG.  It completely destroyed our robot's accuracy, so that more often than not it would crash into either the goal or the "bad cells".  The problem seems to be that the robot's axles are bending a little bit, and our drag wheel is amplifying the problem.  We ended spending most of the time working on the drag wheel, because we really don't want to have to build a new base.  We might have to, though...
     On a more positive note, we succeeded in the rug challenge with a 100% survival rate (although we did have to resurrect one team member twice)!  We also devised a method for escaping from a desert island with three straws, three pipe cleaners, two cups, a couple sticky labels, two paper plates, and a sheet of newspaper.  Our plan: Stretch one pipe cleaner between two palm trees (represented by straws with pipe cleaners stuck in the ends) to form a catapult.  The escapee is catapulted into a teleportation device (a Styrofoam cup with a satellite dish) which teleports them into a newspaper boat.  Then, sail home!  Perfect!  Except the test subject died a few weeks later due to the combined effects of a concussion from the catapult, residual radiation from the teleporter, and a severe lack of food and water.  Oh well.

Team Meeting 10/17

     We're finally programming!      Yes, that's right, today we began to program our robot.  We're working in two teams, one creating a run near base, one working on some missions on the far end of the table.  We originally had some problems with our bluetooth connection drifting the robot to the right, so we ended up not programming directly through bluetooth.  Both runs are coming along well.
     We also worked on adding sources to our main research document.  We had an idea completely unrelated to our bone research, allergy test sticks, but apparently, they've already been created. So why doesn't anyone know about them?  Seems like everyone with food allergies would be rushing to order a packet!  Oh well, there goes our million dollar idea.
     To wrap everything up, we attempted a teamwork activity: all six of us stand on a rug (2' by 3').  The rug is our island, and it is floating in a sea of hot lava.  As long as we stay on the island, we're fine.  But if we step off...  The problem is that our island is upside down.  So, we have to turn it over.   We finally acheived this, but with only a 50% survival rate.  Planning to try that again.
     Overall, we're finally settling into a regular routine.  Hopefully we'll get some work done now!

Team Meeting 10/10

          This meeting was pretty productive.  First of all, we worked on the order we're going to complete the missions in and which ones we're going to do in the same "run" (a single period between the robot leaving and entering base).  We're doing a long run near base and two long runs on the far end of the table, and possibly some short ones in between (If you don't know what base is, then that means you haven't read the rules).
          We finally got the forklift to work!  We ended up using this design, with a few modifications.  Two robots set up, and another may be on the way!
          After we established that, we worked on our project.  New idea for rattan bones: pre-grow the rattan in the general shape of a bone.  Interesting...
          Altogether, a great meeting!  Let's keep it up!

                      

Forklift frustration

Team Meeting 10/6

     Talk about a waste of time.  We spent the first hour or so of our meeting working on a forklift attachment that, contrary to the word working, didn't.  The gear slipped, came out of its groove, and generally had issues.  That took up most of the meeting.  The rest was devoted to questions for the Orthopedic Surgeon we're going to interview.  Questions:

• What are the most common areas to fracture?
• What is not being done now in bone replacement that you would like to see?
• What are the causes of Osteoporosis?
• How would you treat bone cancer
• What is the procedure for a bone graft with a cadaverous bone or mettalic alloy?
• In what situations would a bone graft/replacement be necessary?

Pictures later!

Background Info

Okay, I started this blog a few weeks after we began team meetings, so I should probably tell you what you missed.

The first couple meetings we had, we just focused on the project.  If you haven't looked at my Body Forward link yet, here's another.  One of our team members brought in a page about bone substitutes at the second meeting, and we pretty much decided to go with that because one of them looked so weird: a bonelike material made from chemically altered rattan wood.  Yeah, wow.  Anyway, we looked at it and as well as being cool it looked like one of the best potential bone substitutes being researched.  Apparently it has already been used in sheep and their bones are fusing with it (that's a good thing).  GO SHEEPS!  Further research confirmed that these bones are indeed AWESOME, so that's probably going to be the basis for our project.  One of our ideas to develop this material is mass production: it takes two to three weeks for the rattan bone to be created, and that would be a long time to be sitting in the hospital with a shattered knee.  The most promising of these ideas so far has been to cut the bones out of blocks of the material (which, by the way, is called Hydroxyapatite) at the hospital based on scans of the patient's bone.  This could reduce the wait from a few weeks to a few hours.  Good news if your knee is shattered!

We have a base!

Team meeting 10/3

We have finally (probably) decided on a robot base to use for the competition.  It looks like this:

It's called the three motor chassis (instructions here).  We decided after building two different designs from this website (the one we outruled was the Castor Bot) and debating the different features as a team.  Although the castor bot had an efficient "pusher", the three motor chassis was chosen, mainly for its convenient third motor (surprise surprise).  We're planning on several adjustments, including a forklift, which we think will be helpful for the cast and bone bridge missions.  Not much work on the project today, although we are trying to set up a meeting with an Orthopedic surgeon about our bone substitute topic.  Homework: questions for the doctor.