Six-Bar Linkages

The four bar linkage is perhaps the most common lifting mechanism used in the VRC; the ability to lift your intake in a very simple way without rotating it is an extremely appealing idea. For instance, in the finals of the 2010 World Champs (Clean Sweep), all three robots in the winning alliance used a four bar linkage, and for 2011 (Round …

Conclusion of AURA Workshops

So after three workshops, all of our new members are pretty much up to scratch with the capabilities and workings of the Vex Robotics Design System. A lot of fun was had, and the workshops culminated with the challenges that each robot had to try and complete. While the robots didn’t necessarily drive in a straight line for the drag …

Fush and Chups

So in case you didn’t get to see our robots at World Champs, here are some close-up pictures of one of the two twins, Chups (Fush got broken in our last match, so we dismantled it when we got back to use the parts again). Some of the special, slightly more unique features: – A “six-bar linkage” which is based …

AURA Workshops

We had a pretty good session today, with 27 new members keen to try their hands at working with Vex parts to construct robots. We started with a short presentation about design, and moved onto the main topic of the workshop: drivetrains. We also covered the basic concepts of power and torque, and then let the four teams start designing …

Clips from World Championships

Check out our youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/aucklandrobotics! We have video footage of a bunch of matches at the world champs – mostly from college qualification, but a couple of high school semi-finals and college elimination as well! If you found the content useful, leave us a comment on the video!   Also some photos! [photoxhibit=9]

Public Media Coverage

The week before we left for Worlds, we were involved in several interviews for various media outlets. You can read the article covering us in the Central Leader newspaper here: https://www.aura.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/centralleader.png You can also listen to our 10 minute interview on the Public Address radio show on RadioLIVE here: http://publicaddress.net/system/topic/2979/

World Championships – Final Update

We did pretty well today! After our 2nd place ranking yesterday, we entered into elimination rounds. There was a 32-team bracket, and we beat our first opponents in the round-of-64 and round-of-32, but unfortunately lost to a team from Philadelphia in the round-of-16 in a 2-1 set of 3 matches. It was pretty infuriating for us to be knocked out …

World Championships – Day Two!

After a strong start yesterday as first place in the highly volatile College division (with the rankings changing every match), we played six more matches today. With a lot of work done to perfect the robot mechanically over the last couple of days, most effort was spent on strategy and autonomous today. We won 5 of our 6 matches, beating …

World Championships – First Day Update!

After arriving in Orlando much jet-lagged yesterday at about 6am, we set up our pit, did some urgent repairs on the robots after the plane rides, and got some rest. Today, the competition matches started, with 35 teams competing in the College Division. We faced some tough opponents in our practice match, defending World Champions MNU (Mianyang Normal University) from …

Getting Ready for Worlds

We’ve had a pretty hectic week! In amongst all of the end of mid-semester tests that everyone seems to have for every paper they do, we’ve had to get ready for the World Champs too! This included borrowing a field from Kristin, doing a demonstration to the Vice-Chancellor of the University, doing a public demonstration as well, doing interviews for …