After a strong start yesterday we finished off division play with the last 4 of our matches today. We had a tough first match against the top ranking 720p and 2921B, which we unfortunately lost. However, we won our other 3 games, leaving us second seeded overall in the competition when moving into pool play. We won our first two …
Robot World Cup – Day One
With an 8am start this morning, we settled into our pit and starting ramping up our campaign at the inaugural Robot World Cup. With 20 alliances comprised of 40 robots, we took up a large portion of the Cloud. Teams from New Zealand and Mexico, from high schools and colleges/universities competed together. A number of AURA team members volunteered today, …
October Pinehurst Scrimmage
Saturday 1 October saw the last scrimmage for Upper North Island teams before the much-anticipated Robot World Cup (RWC) next week. As teams work to fine-tune their robots leading to the RWC, the Auckland Scrimmage hosted by Pinehurst School gave teams their last opportunity to not only get some matches in, but also to qualify for the RWC. Qualification for …
September Rosmini Gateway Scrimmage
On Saturday 3 September, 26 teams from 15 schools arrived at Rosmini College to participate in an Upper North Island Scrimmage. Teams travelled from as far away as Katikati to be in Auckland, practising in the lead up to the Robotics World Cup, being held in Auckland from October 11 – 13. A large number of volunteers turned up to …
AURA Quiz @ Glenfield College
At the Glenfield Gateway Scrimmage, AURA presented a small prize (1x 275-1024) for answering a quiz question, which read as follows: “A 30″ goal has the following objects in it at the end of the match, from the top: – White doubler barrel – Red ball – Black negator barrel – White doubler barrel – Blue ball – Blue barrel …
First Gateway Scrimmage 2011
Saturday saw 25 teams descend on Glenfield College to participate in the first Gateway Scrimmage to be held in New Zealand. This was the first opportunity for many teams to play on the field, and for some teams the first time they had even encountered the balls and barrels in real life. It was also the first time that AURA …
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 …