McKenzie Kil-A-Bytes
Team Blog
Building Robots, Building Community
An Outside Perspective on the Accomplishments of Team 1024
March 7,2008
Laura Gates www.giestblog.com
A unique program at Lawrence Township’s McKenzie Career Center has local high schoolers completely engaged in science and technology — and having a ball at the same time!
McKenzie’s Robotics team, the Kil-a-Bytes, has grown from a startup program in 2003 to a dominant presence in the robotics arena with 50 kids on the team this year. The Kil-a-Bytes and their robot recently took First Place at the Midwest Regional competition in Chicago, securing a spot at the national FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship in Atlanta, Ga., April 17-19.
Each year, the Kil-a-Bytes design and build a 120-pound robot in 42 days and then ship it off to compete in three regional FIRST competitions. Then it’s on to the national Championship, where more than 1,600 teams compete for top honors. Founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST aims to “create a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.”
Each season, NASA engineers develop a game for FIRST robotic competitions. This year’s game is “Maximum Overdrive,” where robots are required to work as a team to manipulate a giant, 40-inch ball through obstacles.
McKenzie’s team includes students from Lawrence Central and Lawrence North, as well as one student from Cathedral High School. In years past, students from Hamilton Southeastern and even Franklin Central have joined this top-performing team.
Part of the Kil-a-Bytes success stems from the dedicated involvement of 14 engineering mentors and the generous donations of local businesses. The team spent about $50,000 last year to build its robot, attend competitions and host its own summer tournament, said Carletta Sullivan, McKenzie’s School-to-Work Coordinator. Each team member is responsible to raise $400; the rest comes from grants and sponsors (check out a list of sponsors at www.mckenzierobotics.org).
Local engineers who serve as mentors say they do it as a way to be involved with their community and to interest students in technology careers right here in Indiana.
“The programs they have at McKenzie really impressed me,” says Lead Mentor Jason Zielke, a Fishers resident and vice president of operations for Precise Path Robotics. Zielke signed on as a mentor six years ago when the Kil-a-Bytes were just starting up. (Precise Path President Doug Traster mentors Warren Township’s Robotics Team, making for a friendly rivalry at work!)
Zielke says he’s amazed at the skills students are learning at McKenzie, which is No. 1 in the state for the number of students involved in “Project Lead the Way,” an Indiana Department of Workforce Development initiative which promotes a hands-on, project-based approach to technical learning.
Several students from McKenzie’s robotics program have gone on to elite colleges, including six in the engineering program at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology — four of them on a full-ride scholarship based on their involvement with FIRST Robotics.
Having the mentorship of local engineers is a huge benefit, Sullivan said. Lawrence North student Taylor Chenoweth landed an internship at Aircom Manufacturing after its program mentor, Mick Trompen, noted his remarkable skill designing robots.
“He’s just a unique kid,” Trompen says of Taylor, who joined Aircom as a summer intern in 2007 and continues to work part-time during the school year. “He has a good head for things that are mechanical.” With his experience at Aircom and on the Robotics Team, Chenoweth will be far ahead of his peers when he gets to Purdue University next fall.
“It’s been fun to watch this kid develop into a really accomplished young adult through all this,” Sullivan said. “When you walk into the room and you see a kid on his hands and knees on the floor with an engineer talking about the trade off between speed and power, that’s a rich moment.”
We are fortunate to have such a unique program available to all our kids in the Geist area. Good luck to the McKenzie Kil-a-Bytes at nationals!
Laura Gates
Starting Revelations of the Subconscious Programmer's Mind
An Inside Look at Team 1024's Brain
February 4, 2008
Alex Suchko, Software Team Captain
About a week ago our robot took its first few steps towards fully autonomous driving. After essentially abandoning the IR receiver as a reliable source of data, we’ve concentrated all of our efforts on fully autonomous safe and high speed driving.
Last week marked the end of preliminary tests on the autonomous system of the robot. The automatic driver has successfully completed four back-to-back 100’ sprints arriving at its starting location within about ¼” at a top speed of 15ft/sec. After a success like this, we decided to try a much more difficult path. This time, we set the robot off to make a large 54 foot square path, with ninety degree turns on each corner. The robot successfully completed four laps of this course in one minute (fantastic for a first-run prototype algorithm) and arrived within one inch and 5 degrees of its starting location and angle.
Late last week we finished version two of our popular ultrasonic driver (usdriver.c/h) on ChiefDelphi forums. Usdriver2 can run four ultrasonic sensors simultaneously while still allowing asynchronous operation of the sensors. Furthermore, the algorithm is easy on hardware usage as it makes use of only the TMR1 module and the four MSBs of PORTB. This driver has been successfully tested for durability and crash recovery, and performs at the full update rate of the sensor. This capability will be used for both the auto fire routine during teleoperated mode, as well as the adaptive cruise control feature of the autonomous drive mode.
Unfortunately this week the encoders on our AndyMark Supershifters failed due to too much slop in the bearings of our Supershifters. We decided it was a bad idea to put open frame encoders on such a loose tolerance shaft in the first place, so we’re replacing the open frame encoders with more reliable closed frame ones, and attaching it via a HeliCal flexure shaft coupling. These will be arriving Tuesday, thank goodness! (Along with the parts our super amazing special feature this year…) Also, while on the unfortunate note, our PlasmaCAM table ceased to function and welded itself to the part it was cutting. After a long, long night with the plasma cutter (till about 11pm starting in the afternoon) we managed to get it sort of running with it’s old set of low accuracy, large aperture consumeable stack. *sigh*
Stay tuned for further updates…
-q
Testing the Waters for the FIRST Time
A Rookie's Experience with Robotics
January 14, 2008
Kendra Grossman, Visual Team Member
This year is my first year experiencing First and my first time being on a robotics team. At first I really wasn’t sure what to expect; I was actually pretty nervous. I was afraid that I would be completely confused and lost at the First kick-off and throughout the season. What if I didn’t understand all the technical terminology, or understand what the game was this year. I would be a typical “freshy” just getting in the way and not doing a thing to help. However, that was never the case on team 1024. From the very first robotics meeting, to the First kick-off and through out the season, being a “freshy” never made a difference. It was simply “Here let me show you how this works”, or “Why don’t you do this”, or “You’re a part of the team too; what do you think?”
So far, my experience with Team 1024 has been amazing. I have already learned so much and made so many friends on the team. Each and every day, Grant, my sub-team leader, has something new for us to learn and to do. He teaches me something new each day, from something as easy as writing text on the site, to things more complicated, like linking pages. I have learned about the other sub-teams as well, and have gotten a much better idea as to what each group does and their responsibilities on the team. Though some tasks look easier then others, I think we all share the same amount of responsibility for this team. Without each sub-team, Team 1024 would not be a success.
The time seems to fly during the build season. It’s hard to believe that in a short few weeks we will be shipping our robot. I have heard that the best part of the season is when the competitions begin, but I’m not too sure. I can’t say for sure till the season comes to an end, but it’s hard to believe that anything can be more fun then the build part of the season, or the coming together as a team part of the season. These past few weeks all the members have come together as a team. We have spent hours together, getting to know one another, building friendships, and building a robot. As a team, we have developed teamwork and cooperation in just a few crazy weeks. I’m just not so sure that competing can be more fun than building a team and a robot.
Time to throw it into Overdrive!
Initial Reactions to the Game
January 6, 2008
Grant Lin, Visual Team Captain/Webmaster
Yesterday brought the earliest morning on my entire break, so that I could venture down to the IUPUI Campus, where our team went to watch the National Kick-off broadcast. Being a fourth year member, I knew basically what to expect, but I also knew that Dean, Woodie, and the rest of the FIRST Board of Directors always tend to pull out surprises, so I was ready to stay on my toes.
One of the most memorable moments of kickoff for me, besides learning this year's game, occured when David Lavery joked about the unending 90-day-mission to Mars, saying that they've gotten desparate enough to even begin throwing asteroids at the planet to try and destroy the rovers. It also helped that one of our team mentors, who was a team member a few years ago, began cracking up behind me.
When Overdrive was first unveiled, my first reaction was, oh geez, those trackballs are huge. When I realized the object also included racing around a track, I was reminded of our robot from the 2004 game, in which our driver learned how to drift quickly around the central tetra - quite fun to watch. Ideas on completing the game began shooting through my head - we would head back to McKenzie later to compile the specs we wanted our robot to be able to achieve.
I can't wait to see what the other subteams have come up with when we meet on Wednesday to go through design proposals. It's promising to be a very interesting year, and I can't wait to see how all the teams tackle the issue of moving the trackball!
-Grant
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