Name: “Siverbolt”
Dimensions: 29.75″x26.25″x28″
Weight: 105 lbs
Concept: Shortly after the 2013 Kickoff, 604 quickly recognized that the robot needed to quickly score Frisbees and reload from both the ground and feeder stations. With the emphasis on accurate scoring, every shot needed to be taken quickly and as accurately as possible, regardless of the position on the field or when under heavy defense. The robot needed to be short enough to maneuver under the pyramid to pickup frisbees during autonomous. Silverbolt is able to accomplish all of these with a camera tracking system to nearly make 100% of all shots. In addition, Silverbolt a 120 degree vertically rotatable shooter to adjust to the optimal position to score. Furthermore, Silverbolt has a low mounted shooter to fit underneath the pyramid and also has the ability to hang at the first level.
Features:
- Two-speed shift-on-the-fly transmission: 6 and 17 feet per second
- 6 wheel drive “West Coast Drive” base: Light, robust, and easy to maintain
- Software-assisted operation: Automatic shooting sequences with vision aiming controlled by an onboard computer processor
- Frisbee bucket hopper able to accommodate up to 4 Frisbees
- Over 120 degree vertical shooter angle rotation to be able to shoot in all goals
- Under-bumper pickup, just smaller than 2 Frisbees to prevent clogging
- 2 hooked hanging arms to allow the robot to hang on the first level of the pyramid
Leland Robotics Blog
2013 Robot – Silverbolt
March 3rd, 2013
2013 Week 5 & 6 Update
February 28th, 2013After 6 weeks of early mornings, and late nights,the build season came to a dramatic end at 10:10pm 2/19/13. From bumpers to programming to mechanical, 604 has put an extraordinary amount of work into the 2013 robot.
We would like to thank all the alumni who helped us in various areas — mechanical to electrical, management to purchase ordering. Also we would like to thank the parents who provided us with food and their time. Finally, we would like to thank all mentors who always supported our team despite the time or task at hand.
Quixilver participated in a charity event, Teens for Jeans. Team members donated a total of 101 pairs of jeans, about 1/3 of the entire school’s donation.
FIRST Team 604 Quixilver, along with our 2013 robot, are ready to compete at Sacramento and Silicon Valley Regionals. See you there!
Remember to visit The Blue Alliance for event information, as well as a live stream for the events.
2013 Week 3 & 4 Update
February 3rd, 2013Time flies when you’re building a robot! Weeks 3 and 4 have whizzed right by, and Quixilver has been hard at work. We started off week 3 with our design review, where mentors, professional engineers, alumni, and members all gave feedback on the robot design. We also finished the shooter and intake prototypes, assembled the transmission, machined the chassis, assembled the robot base, started writing and testing codes for the robot. With all that has been done over the past two weeks, Quixilver is ready for week 5 of build season! We are looking forward to more machining, more assembling, more programming, and more visits from all our alumni! In addition to the birth of our 2013 robot, drivers have been practicing with previous years’ robots to get ready for the upcoming regionals, we have designed our new bumpers, and team members have also programmed a scouting system. In addition, numerous team members and adults volunteered at the FLL Peninsula Championship Tournament
Looking ahead to prepare for next season, Quixilver attended the Leland HS recruitment night, spreading the FIRST message as well as promoting our team. Quixilver also hosted two Lego Mindstorm NXT classes (Build a Robot Day) on February 2nd, 2013; everyone who attended the classes enjoyed them very much! Our school administrators also supported our event by participating with their beloved children, making the classes a huge success.
Two weeks left!
2013 Week 1 & 2 Update
January 18th, 2013After two weeks of hard work, Quixilver has made great progress on the 2013 FRC challenge. Our robot design is nearly finalized due to various brainstorms and discussions among team members and mentors. With many opinions and suggestions from our mentors and alumni, the team was able to build multiple prototypes for our robot using a variety of materials, as well as to start on CADing. In addition, our programmer and mechanical teams continued to offer many workshops to members along side the school Computer Science Club. The CS club allows programmers to learn more and also become comfortable the unique robot code. Some of our programmers also re-programmed a few of the past robots as to prepare the team for future demos as well as the new robot. As for machining wise, Quixilver has some amazing custom-made wheels this year, thanks to our great sponsor, Exatron!
In addition to the robotics aspect, the practice field for our robot is nearly completed. Quixilver also held a demo at the local Tech Museum and one of our team members was invited to be the speaker and join a panel on how to build robots. In order to continue helping the community, our team has teamed up with the rest of the school in participating in an event called Teens for Jeans, to collected jeans for the less fortunate.
Ultimate Ascent 2013
January 5th, 2013At the crack of dawn this morning, approximately 40 members from FIRST Team 604, as well as numerous alumni and mentors, arrived at San Jose State University for the 2013 FRC Silicon Valley Regional Kickoff. At 7:30 AM, the live stream from FIRST HQ began. After months of anticipation following the aftermath of last season’s monumental challenge, FIRST students were presented with this year’s new challenge — Ultimate Ascent!
The game is played on a 27′ x 54′ carpeted field with two alliances of three teams each. Robots attempt to score as many frisbees as possible into goals along the ends of the fields in a two minute and fifteen second match. Each match begins with 15 seconds of autonomous competition where robots can shoot discs for extra points—after that time, the drivers step up, and the robot is in their hands. Four goals at three different heights are available for scoring, and as the robot scores loftier goals, more points will be earned. Towards the end of the match, robots attempt to ascend pyramids located in the center of the playing field.
Following the presentation, Team 604 helped distribute kits of parts— we managed to serve over 50 teams in under 30 minutes. 3 rookie teams were also present, and we warmly welcome them to the FIRST community. Good luck to everyone, and we look ahead to a great season!
2012 FLL Tournament
November 12th, 2012Team 604 Quixilver had a wonderful success on November 10, 2012 hosting the Quixilver Qualifier FLL tournament. With 24 teams present, Quixilver was able to host a successful tournament from 9:00am to 4:00pm, and finished clean up before 6:00pm – with spare time left over from our expectations.
This season’s challenge for FLL is Senior Solutions, where students build and program a robot to complete different tasks with LEGO Mindstorm NXT, including bowling and gardening. With this challenge, students are able to learn about the life of senior citizens, as well as the relationship between them and the community. In responding to this challenge, Quixilver invited many senior citizens from the community to join us and watch the tournament. Throughout the event, we provided a broadcast in the pit area for the FLL teams to help them follow up with the competitions, and we got good feedback from it. In addition, to add more excitement to the game, we modeled after FRC tournaments and implemented an alliance selection. For most of the FLL teams, it was a completely new concept that they had not learned about. We also had a raffle for all participants and we were happy to see the smiles on the lucky winners’ faces. By hosting this tournament, Quixilver was able to send 11 teams to the next level of competition and allowed them to compete at the Silicon Valley Championship.
Congratulations to those 11 teams and we wish you the best of luck! To conclude this successful event, team 604 would like to thank all the members who helped out, as well as team 668, The Apes of Wrath, and team 2643, Dark Matters. Also thanks to all the judges, referees, and adult volunteers! Quixilver would like to thank our principal Dr. Mukherjee and assistant principal Mr. Park for dropping by the tournament, which was a big support! Lastly, a big thank you to our mentor, Mr. Mori, for leading and guiding us through everything in order to have this tournament to run smoothly! Team 604 will see you again next year at the FLL tournament!
2012 CalGames Off Season Competition
October 13th, 2012Following a summer full of demos, FIRST Team 604 kicked off the 2012-2013 season with successfully competing in the WRRF Off season competition – CalGames.
In preparation for CalGames, the decision was made to repair worn out components and secure all components to give our team the best edge for at the competition. The programming code was also updated to improve the accuracy of the vision processing to improve our aim. This held true for most of the competition. After being ranked at the 9th seed, we were chosen to join the 5th seed alliance with FIRST Team 2073 Eagle Force from Pleasant Grove High School and FIRST Team 701 the RobotVikes from Vanden High School. Despite the alliance’s strength we lost in the Semi Finals against the first seed alliance, composed of: FIRST Team 971 from Mountain View High School, FIRST Team 254 from Bellermine College Preparatory and FIRST Team 766 from Menlo-Atherton High School. This alliance would go on to win the entire competition. However the defeat did not last long, when we found out we won the Entrepreneurship Award and were the first runner up to the AMD Cal Award.
On November 10th, we are scheduled to host the 4th annual Quixilver Qualifier at Leland High School. We wish all the teams attending our competition best of luck.
2012 Google Silicon Valley Regional Conclusion
April 5th, 2012After the success at the Sacramento Regional two weeks prior, FIRST Team 604 came home to compete at the Google Silicon Valley Regional ready for some intense competition. We made a few changes to our robot since Sacramento and they paid off. After ten qualification matches, we seeded 14th and later moved up to the 8th alliance captain out of 50 teams. Working with our scouters, we formed an alliance with FIRST Teams 2073, EagleForce, and 192, GRT. Although we narrowly lost in the quarterfinals to the eventual champions, FIRST Teams 971, 254, and 766, we gave them one of their closest matches.
The day before, Mr. Mori, our long time mentor since 2005, won the Woodie Flowers Finalist Award. He will go on to compete for the Woodie Flowers Award at the Championship Event in St. Louis. You can read his nominating essay here. This brings the number of Woodie Flower Finalist Award recipients on our team to three, including Mrs. Arrington (Sacramento 2010) and Mrs. Best (Sacramento 2011). Our team is so lucky to have such amazing mentors!
Mr. Mori was not the only person on our team to receive recognition. On Saturday, Kunal M., a senior on our team, was recognized as one of two Dean’s List Finalists at the Silicon Valley Regional for his passion and leadership in FIRST. He will go on to compete for the Dean’s List Award at the Championship Event in St. Louis.
The good news did not end here. Our team was honored to received the most prestigious award given at the event, the Regional Chairman’s Award. We will now compete against all of the other regional winners at St. Louis for the coveted Championship Chairman’s Award.
FIRST Team 604 would like to thank our sponsors, mentors, parents, and alumni for all of their support. None of this would be possible without them. We will see you all at the FIRST Championship Event in St. Louis in a few short weeks!
Sureshot scoring during quarterfinals
Cutting the net!
Our 5th RCA in 6 years!
2012 Google Silicon Valley Regional: Day 2
March 30th, 2012After an exhausting day at the San Jose State Event Center, we were extremely excited to learn that our mentor, Jim Mori, won the Woodie Flower’s Finalist Award. Mr. Mori has been involved with the FIRST program since 1999 and with FIRST Team 604 since 2005. He has worked with FIRST Teams 254, 668, 1967, 2135, 3256 and even more as the Lead Robot Inspector at Silicon Valley. He now joins our other two WFFA recipients, Mrs. Arrington and Mrs. Best to complete the threepeat!
Adding on to the celebration was the fact that it was presented by Andy Baker, the 2003 Championship Woodie Flower’s Award recipient.
Andy Baker (WFA, 2003), Mr. Beck (Regional Director), Mrs. Best (WFFA 2011), Mr. Mori (WFFA 2012), and Mrs. Arrington (WFFA 2010)
Congratulations to Mr. Mori!
2012 Sacramento Regional
March 19th, 2012FIRST Team 604 started another successful competition season at the 2012 Sacramento Regional, held at the UC Davis ARC Pavilion. Originally faced with some technical issues, our team was able to overcome some of them and use our skill on the coopertition(TM) bridge to our advantage. Completing a total of four coopertition(TM) balances, we seeded 4th, and were the 3rd alliance captain. After picking FIRST Team 840, Aragon High School, we were able to complete the alliance with our close friends, FIRST Team 1323, Madera High School. However after lunch, we were plagued with more technical issues, and fell to the eventual finalists, composed of FIRST Teams 3669, 3256, and 3598. We are extremely proud of FIRST Team 3256, a team we have extensively worked with, for their stellar performance and their Entrepreneurship Award on Friday night.
The day ended with a pleasant surprise with the news that we had won the Engineering Inspiration Award. This award has officially qualified us for the FIRST Championship in St. Louis, MO, and NASA will be paying the $5,000 entry fee as a reward for our accomplishments.
We would also like to thank everyone who stuck with us through our difficulties with the webcast, we have fixed them for the Silicon Valley webcast. If you have any comments or feedback, please email us. The match videos will be split and uploaded to The Blue Alliance sometime this week. Stay tuned for updates!
Only two weeks until SVR! Go 604!
Balancing in our final prelim match with FIRST Team 971
FIRST Team 604 at the Sacramento Regional
Our Engineering Inspiration Trophies and Medals!
