The New Zealand Sack Attack season continued this weekend with the second Auckland scrimmage, hosted by Glenfield College. Teams had one month since the season opener, and it was a chance to test changes to their designs under the rigor of competition. Improvements in design had a noticeable impact on general game play and strategy from teams, as teams became …
Rookie Workshops
As school holidays began for high school students in New Zealand, AURA took the opportunity to host two “rookie workshops” in conjunction with the Kiwibots for students who are new to VEX Robotics. On each of Monday the 2nd and Tuesday the 3rd of June, we held two sets of educational workshops – mechanical and programming. 24 students attended the …
June 2012 – FIRST Lego League (FLL)
Over the weekend of the 16th and 17th of June, AURA team members volunteered at a FIRST Lego League (FLL) event held at ACG Strathallan in Papakura. FLL is a competition run for students ages nine to sixteen, and is a completely autonomous competition. Lego “Mindstorms” robots, built and programmed by the students, try to complete as many “missions” as …
Workshop Information at University of Auckland
The workshops are being run at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Auckland. The address is 20 Symonds Street, Auckland Central. Students can be dropped off on Grafton Road. Parking is found under the Business School, also on Grafton Road. Alternatively, there are lots of public transport options, including trains into Britomart and a number of buses which …
June Sack Attack Scrimmage
The 2012/2013 VEX Robotics season has officially started in New Zealand, with our first “Sack Attack” scrimmage being held at Owairaka School in Mt Albert on Saturday the 23rd of June. The event was held in conjunction with Gifted Education Awareness Week, which meant that throughout the day there were members of the public coming in to see the robots …
AURA Workshops
Over the last three weeks, AURA has been running workshops for new university team members. The workshops introduced new members to VEX Robotics and were also an opportunity for everyone to get to know each other. The workshops featured presentations on different types of lifts, drive-trains and electronics, giving the new members some basic information to build their very own …
Shifting X-Drive
With the release of VEX Sack Attack, many teams have begun to talk about using transmissions on their drivetrains. This is probably the best game ever for a shifting drive; speed is needed due to the large field and race for the easy to access sacks (by the goals), and torque is needed for the inevitable push battle that will …
Why is X-Drive Faster?
In this article, Oliver explains why x-drives have a higher effective gear ratio than tank drives. This seems unintuitive to a lot of people, but an X-drive robot has a higher maximum speed* than a tank drive robot with the same gear ratio. To best understand this, it helps if we consider what happens when the robot drives diagonally. Figure …
World Champs Press Release
Team AURA (Auckland University Robotics Association) from the University of Auckland were the College Division runners-up at the VEX Robotics World Championship held in Anaheim, California last month. AURA sent two teams to compete at the World Champs, with AURA2 also putting in a strong performance reaching the round-of-16 during a single elimination bracket. With the winner of the best-of-3 …
A Wild Double Cheese Appears?!?
Double Cheese was one of the robots that we built for the 2012 Vex Robotics World Championships College Challenge, and played as part of the AURA2 team which placed 11th after qualifications and finished as the quarter-finalists. Double Cheese gets its name from the wedges on the front of its chassis. These allow it to drive through an isolation zone …