HR Geeks

The Lockheed newsletter had a review of one of their FIRST teams, Miss Daisy, of the Delaware Valley, who took top honors at the FIRST championships.

article

The last paragraph has some interesting info I am going to look into:

Robotic Simulation

In addition to providing monetary support for the FIRST teams, Lockheed Martin also provides software that allows students to simulate FIRST Robotics competition.

Known as 5th Gear, the software was developed in 2008 by a group of Lockheed Martin FIRST mentors.

It simulates FIRST matches, giving students the ability to practice and try out different strategies before they finish building their robot. Up to six players can compete virtually on personal computers using Xbox 360™ controllers. Lockheed Martin makes 5th Gear available for all FIRST competing teams at no charge, as part of its sponsorship of the program.

Norfolk Technical Center is competing in this year’s US FIRST Robotics Challenge. A few HRGeeks members have been mentoring the students – assisting with software design / development, networking, and robot construction and electrical connections.
After 5 long weeks, the robot is moving under it’s own power, being remotely driven via joystick.

NTC FIRST Team’s Robot takes it’s ‘first’ steps! from HR Geeks on Vimeo.

Click through for a higher resolution view of the video.

If you’re local to the 757 (Southside would probably be best, but it’s up to you), shoot me an email if you’re interested in helping out a local group of high school kids in building their FIRST robot for competition. Work begins in January, for competition later in the spring.

Here’s a taste of what you missed if you weren’t at the meetup last week!  Brian brought the robot he is entering into the BattleBots contest in California, and gave us a quick (it was freezing out) parking lot demo of the thing in action.  Everything on the chassis (except the motors, I think) is custom built by Brian and his classmate, even the dual-motor gear box.  Very impressive!

Good luck with the contest Brian – we’d love to see it again with the end effector in place

Landstown Highschool Robot from HR Geeks on Vimeo.

(It’s dark because it was about 10:30PM at night in the mall parking lot.  Sorry – better video next time!)