The Sensational Seven

Team 14785

The Sensational Seven

Once upon a time, we were weird and unsocialized homeschoolers. Then we met each other by joining a homeschool group. We decided to start doing robotics because we

liked robots and such. Our coach, Mr. Zack is awesome. He is an engineer so he knows more than we do. That helps us, but he makes us think for ourselves, which can be

annoying sometimes. We are a rookie team this year so we are hoping for the best. We will definitely make a lot of daft mistakes, but we will do our best to learn from them. Please follow us on our twitter account which may or may not exist. #sensational7

Ethan QuintonMy name is Ethan, and I am 11 years old. I am homeschooled by my awesome mother. My

dad, who is also awesome, is our robotics

coach. I sure do have awesome parents. They are the best! Apart from

robotics, I play flag football with my friends. We just finished our season in second place! I also sing in two choirs, the Holy House Academy Choir and

the First Colony Homeschool Ensemble. I enjoy video games, nerf wars, and playing outside with my friends and three brothers. This is my first year

doing the FIRST Tech Challenge. Two years ago, I was on the VEX IQ robotics team called the InVEXibles. We won the world championship!! We decided to

do FTC for a greater challenge. I am excited to see what will happen this year.

Benjamin Vultaggio

My name is Benjamin Vultaggio and I am eleven years old. This is my first time doing FIRST robotics. I did one year of VEX robotics and we won the

middle school world championship! I like to build Legos and listen to music. I

hope that we have a good year of robotics and am looking forward to the rest of the year.

Jack Jones

● Has 6 siblings ● Not bad with computers and programming

● Not enthusiastic ● Always thinking

● Thought up the name “The Sensational Seven”

Why I joined the Sensational Seven I enjoy competition if it’s for something I’m not terrible at, and robotics is one thing I’m fine with. And, many friends were also on the team, which provided no reason for me not to join. I also believed, and still believe, that I would be a great addition to any robotics team, because I can handle computers quite

well

Ian Zimmermann

GREETINGSI AM IAN, CREATED TO BE A ROBOT PROTOTYPE AND TEST FOR TRUE

ARTIFICIAL INTELLEGENCE. MY PROGRAM IS 12, ALMOST 13 YEARS OLD, BUT THIS FORM IS ONLY ONE YEAR OLD. I AM COMPLETELY UNLIKE ANY OTHER ROBOT, LOOKING AND ACTING AS A HUMAN. THERE ARE A FEW MALFUNCTIONS THOUGH: MY SENSE OF HUMOR IS TOO LOW, I AM TOO LITERAL, MY SENSE OF PERFECTION IS TOO HIGH, AND A FEW OTHER ERRORS NEED TO BE FIXED. SOME OF MY FAVORITE HUMAN THINGS ARE: LIGHTNING, DRAGONS SWORDS AND GAMES. IT WILL BE A LITTLE DIFFICULT TO TELL ME APART FROM THE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE SENSATIONAL SEVEN UNTILL YOU ASK ME TO CRACK A JOKE.

HA! HA! HA!

ALSO, BEWARE BECAUSE I AM WAY TOO LITERAL AND ROBOT-LIKE. BUT JUST BEWARE, SOME OF MY JOKES MAY KILL A FEW PEOPLE. BUT RIGHT NOW IT IS ONE OF MY CHARGING TIMES, SO GOODB…

POWERDOOOWN…

Aiden QuintonMy name is Aiden, and I am a

homeschooled 13-year-old. This is my first year competing in the FIRST Tech

Challenge. My very first experience with robotics was two years ago when I was

on the VEX IQ team called the InVEXibles. We won the world

championship that year so that’s going to be hard to beat! My dream is to

become an astronaut, which is why this challenge is exciting for me. I also play football and sing in two choirs. I enjoy

hanging out with my friends, playing video games and nerf wars, and learning about all things space.

Liam JonesMy name is Liam Jones and I’m 14 years old, and I’m homeschooled. A few of my likes and dislikes are as follows: Likes:

1. Gaming, examples are: ARK: Survival evolved, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Minecraft, Antichamber, etc.

2. Drawing. 3. Hiking.

4. Failing to make things such as shelters and primitive tools… 5. My bow. 6. My other weapons. 7. My watch, which feels weird when I take off. 8. InGen.

Dislikes: 1. Politics 2. Evil, which is the same thing as politics. 3. Coding, which still does not make me bad at robotics, I am good at

building. 4. Video games involving bad things, such as Fallout series ect. 5. Phones. 6. Computers in general.

Why I joined robotics: I joined the Sensational Seven so I could spend more time with my friends.

Jack Vultaggio

My name is Jack Vultaggio. I am 14 years old, and this is my first year with FIRST. I used to be on a robotics team with VEX Robotics, and our team won

the Middle School World Championship in 2017. I enjoy playing piano and basketball. I also enjoy playing video games and listening to music,

especially Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots. My first year with FIRST has been different and challenging, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming

challenges and competitions this year has in store for our team!

Engineering SectionRobot Iterations

1) Basic Tetrix Bota. Built to understand the function of the controllers, phones,

motors, and servos. b. Limited function besides driving around the field.

2) Basic Bot with claw

a. Built to incorporate a claw/forklift type of mechanismb. Addition of claw to original base.

3) Basic Bot for Rover Ruckusa. Built to incorporate a tower with grabber and harvester. b. Removed the claw and added a tower. c. Harvester picks up mineralsd. Arm is rotated with DC motor

4) Custom Bot 1a. Built with Basic Bot chassis and linear slide with claw grabberb. Removed all superstructure from chassis c. Added linear slide with DC motor to liftd. Claw with limited movement

5) Custom Bot 2a. Removed servo on arm and replaced with motorb. Replaced regular tire with all terrain tires

6) Custom Bot 3a. Removed flat tetrix arm and replaced with channel for greater

supportb. Replaced basket type claw with dual servo pincher type claw

7) Custom Bot 4a. Removed claw arm because it was taking too long to pick up

elements and drop them in the lander.b. Made a prototype scoop out of cardboard, later made out of

plexiglass which kept cracking, so we removed it

c. Made a latch on the same linear slide which was difficult to align with the lander support bracket

8) Custom Bot 5a. Widened latch to allow for easier latching

b. Removed scoop, added plexiglass “flickers” to the front of the

robotc. Added wheels to the bottom of linear slide to help robot out of

crater. Initially we just used electrical tape around some gears, and later bought more wheels to use instead.

d. Added a 3 in. metal piece and servo motor to flick the marker.

9) Custom Bot 6:a. Took monster wheels off, replaced with omni wheelsb. Mounted RC phone near top of lift to detect gold and silverc. Added strafing wheel in middle of robot for autonomous to strafe

and detect minerals, and ease of maneuvering during TeleOp

10) Custom Bot 7a:a. Used plastic phone mount to attach phone near top of slide

b. Plastic prongs broke so used rubber bands to attach phone: not secure enough

11) Custom Bot 7b:a. Make an X metal mount for the phone. Attached phone with

rubber bands

b. Mounted lower on the slide, below slide motor

12) Custom Bot 8a. Added second expansion hub because we needed more motors.b. Changed wheel configuration: removed strafing wheel in center,

now one wheel on front, back, and sides, each with their own motor.

13) Custom Bot 9 Used one drawer slide, hoping we could use it to get minerals out

of crater Was not long enough

14) Custom Bot 10 Attached another drawer slide to existing one under the latch

parallel to the flickers with a claw on the end. We attached parts of a plastic cup to help scoop minerals faster. It extends 3ft from the side of the robot into the crater.

We got it to extend from the robot to the crater and lift into the lander

Problemso Arm interfered with latchingo Was hard to control: worried about damaging lander or

other robots.o Arm was heavy: worried about our robot tipping over o Claw position made it difficult to accurately place minerals

in landero Servo on claw got stuck on lander

15) Custom Bot 11 Moved to arm to stationary part of linear slide, perpendicular to

the flickers. Now the arm extends from the front of the robot. Wench and pulley system string interfered with the linear slide

and latch Arm kept hitting the phone mount Arm was too long when it was pushed all the way in.

16) Custom Bot 12 Bolted the arm to the side of the robot under the phone mount

Took off claw, added a plow made of cut plastic cups to the end with a servo to move it giving us the ability to “rake” minerals

from the crater Used wench and pulley system with a motor to extend the arm

straight out in front after landing. Replaced flickers with metal bars to push minerals into depot

Lessons Learned

1) The screws and nuts attached to the gears easily vibrate loose. It is necessary to add Loctite to the threads to make sure they do not back out.

2) The structural components will fail if the screws become loose. Zipties are required to make sure that parts stay together if the screws fail.

3) The crater requires close wheel configuration. Too much space between the wheels will make the robot become stuck on the crater.

4) We shouldn’t work or walk on the field with shoes. This causes divots, which effect the wheel traction

5) Keep plastic parts off the ground because people could step on them and break them (phone mount)

6) Having a practice meeting the night before a competition is risky. If anything breaks or fails, you don’t have much time to fix it.

7) Be careful when pulling wires out of the expansion hub. They can break pretty easily.

8) TensorFlow program works best when the phone’s power button is up.9) Latching and maneuvering is much easier with the strafe wheel.

Competitions and Scrimmages1. League Competition: November 17, 2018

In the first league competition, November 17, 2018 the Sensational Seven had many failures, but many more successes and learning experiences. Our autonomous was slightly superior to the other teams, but much work was needed anyway. The only time we scored any points was the driver period, and even that was difficult at best. The teams of drivers that worked well together were Ian and Liam, and Jack and Jack.

WHAT WENT RIGHT Adding large wheels added traction, helped us move out of crater. Our autonomous was superior. We had adequate drivers. Most other robots were immobilized by bad autonomous or failed

driver period. We got 4 qualification points.

WHAT WENT WRONG Our autonomous may have been superior, but it still scored no points. Our claw was difficult to work with. Our robot, the Turtle, barely passed size inspection. We landed in the crater almost every time at the end of the matches.

WHAT WE CHANGED We added a latch. Time-based autonomous instead of sensors

2. Scrimmage: December 1, 2018

The teams from Alief Early College invited us to their school for a scrimmage. This was our first opportunity to use our latch with an alliance. The latch worked well. We tried to push the minerals into the depot, but they kept getting stuck under the robot. We decided to add the plexiglass flickers afterwards to prevent this. We used our new time-based program but it kept failing. Tweaks need to be done before next competition.

3. League Competition: January 12, 2019In the second league competition, January 12, 2019, the Sensational Seven was significantly more adept. All of the drivers worked well together, and autonomous succeeded most times, putting the Seven in sixth place overall.

WHAT WENT RIGHT All drivers worked together well. Alliance members also worked with us by pushing us off minerals we

were stuck on. We were almost never stolen from. We got 4 more qualification points, totaling 8. We found out that using the smaller wheels first gets us out of craters.

WHAT WENT WRONG We lost 3 out of 5 matches. Our autonomous failed twice. Our alliance team failed to show up for the first match. We almost got stuck in the crater. We got a penalty for running into a robot during autonomous. We got a penalty for blocking our depot.

WHAT WE CHANGED Took off big wheels, added omniwheels instead. Added strafe wheel in the center for sideways movement. Using TensorFlow to detect minerals for sampling during autonomous.

4. Scrimmage: January 19, 2019

We were invited to a second scrimmage with Alief Early College. We had 4 teams this time so we were able to have real matches. We came in second place after 6 matches. Our flickers and latch worked well. Our TensorFlow programming didn’t work because other robots were jostling us on the way down off the lander. This caused us to be off center on the ground, and the phone could not detect any minerals. We worked on writing code to tell the robot to straighten out before detecting. We ended up detecting the minerals while on the lander before landing.

5. League Championship: January 26, 2019

WHAT WENT RIGHT We got the 2nd highest score. We got the Think Award because we had the best engineering section

of our notebook. Our autonomous sampled the gold mineral when it was in the center

position.WHAT WENT WRONG

We failed to put minerals in the lander, which was the ultimate reason we didn’t win in 1st place.

Our autonomous was only half reliable. We got penalized for guarding our depot.

WHAT WE CHANGED We repositioned the wheels to help us strafe. We are trying to add a harvesting arm.

Programming1) TeleOp mode 1:

a. Claw operationb. Lift operationc. Motor for wheels (2)

2) TeleOp mode 2:a. Lift operationb. Front flicker operationc. Motor for wheels (2)

3) TeleOp mode 3:a. Lift operationb. Front flicker operationc. Motor for wheels (2)d. Strafe wheel operation (1)

4) TeleOp mode 4:a. Lift operationb. Motor for wheels (4)c. Harvesting slide operationd. Servo for scoop

5) Autononous 1-

a. We used distance and color sensors, we tried to claim by using a distance sensor to avoid walls until it found the blue depot tape and placed the marker, then park partially in the crater

b. Problems we had:

i. The distance sensor didn’t work too well because its placement made it not able to avoid some walls. The best solution to that problem would have been to have two distance sensors, which we did not have time for at that point.

ii. The color sensor code was wrong and would not detect the right colors, but it worked with skin color.

6) Autonomous 2 – a. we were having a hard time figuring out sensors before the first

competition, so we decided to write 3 time-based programs for the next one. Depending on which side of the lander we are on, we will choose one of the 3 programs.

b. Depot side: we can land, drive around the 3 minerals, claim depot, and drive into the crater

c. Crater side: we can land, drive straight into craterd. Problems we encountered

i. Not consistent: battery power might have been a factorii. We have different type of mat at home, maybe friction

between the different mats and the wheels contributed to the inconsistency.

iii. Couldn’t sample7) Autonomous 3-

a. Using TensorFlow we were able to devise a program to detect and sample the gold mineral.

b. Depot side: We can land, detect and sample gold, claim depot, and stop right before the crater (since changing our back wheels to omniwheels and adding a strafe wheel, we can’t easily get out of the crater.)

c. Crater side: We can land, detect and sample gold.d. Problems we encountered with TensorFlow

i. Needs to detect all three mineralsii. Hard to detect depending on lightingiii. It detects all the minerals in the crater, have to position the

phone high and tilted down

Driver Controlled

Autonomous 1: Using distance and color sensors

Autonomous 2: Time Based

Autonmous 3: TensorFlow Based

Table of Contents

Team Member Bios……………………………………………………………………………………..Section 1Business Plan………………………………………………………………………………………………Section 2Engineering………………………………………………………………………………………………..Section 3Compeitions and Scrimmages…………………………………………………………………….Section 4Programming……………………………………………………………………………………………...Section 5Competition Scouting…………………………………………………………………………………Section 6Design meetings…………………………………………………………………………………………Section 7Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………………Section 8

Team Goals

Mission StatementThe Sensational Seven seeks to learn science and engineering principles through research, design, building, and programming while participating in FIRST Tech Challenge this year. We also seek to meet other science and engineering minded people and prove ourselves to be worthy competitors in our first season.General Goals

1. Demonstrate and promote FIRST values of Gracious Professionalism2. Lead as examples in safety3. Work as a team in all manners of building and competition4. Compete in all league matches5. Practice between matches with a mentor team at scrimmages

Building Goals1. Use PITSCO Tetrix set to build basic robot2. Determine new parts that may help with robot movement and scoring3. Learn how robotic electronics work and use different power and

communication methods4. Learn how to use of gears to increase speed or power

Progamming Goals 1. Develop a competition strategy for autonomous and driver controlled

periods

2. Develop programming skills in Block programming3. Use sensors to help with autonomous period4. Learn how different movement methods work best (time-based,

encoder, IMU)

Team Organization

Aiden Quinton Team Captain Student Coach Driver Programming

Jack Vultaggio Team Captain Student Coach Driver Notebook

Jack Jones Programming Driver Notebook Presentation

Ethan Quinton Lead Builder Driver Scout Notebook

Benny Vultaggio Builder Driver Inspector

Liam Jones Builder Driver Notebook Scout

Ian Calkins

Builder Driver Scout Inspector

Team History

The Sensational Seven was formed in August 2018. Rover Ruckus is our first challenge with FIRST. Four of our members were part of another robotics team in the 2017-2018 season, but decided to join FIRST with three other people from our home school co-op for the 2018-2019 season. We were not equipped to participate in every aspect of FIRST this season, but after learning more about what is expected of a champion team from our mentors, we are excited to improve our outreach, fundraising, and Engineering Notebook documentation next season.

SWT Analysis

We took some time to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and threats we experieced as a team up to this point. We will use the following information to make decisions on our teams’ next steps for the remainder of the season. Most importantly, this analysis has helped us see where we need to make improvements for next season.

Strengths

Quick to learn Dedicated Cooperative Creative

Threats

Sponsorship Scheduling Funding

Weaknesses

Young team Inexperienced Shy

Strengths Quick to learn: considering this was our first year, we picked up on

block programming before our second league competition. We used resources available over the internet to teach ourselves programming and how the tetrix pieces fit together. We quickly realized that gears were important to the mechanics of our robot.

Dedicated: one of our programmers stays awake until 10:00 working on the autonomous that now works extremely well. Our team felt the need to finish what we start and to make sure things are completed properly. We are also a relatively young team and we fared decently well at our previous competitions.

Weaknesses Young team: We are 6th-9th graders competing againts 11th-12th

graders. Inexperienced: We are a rookie team this year and Shy:

Fundraising Plan

This year, we did not do any fundraising or receive any grants. We were completely funded by our parents with all cost split between our four families. A big challenge we have experienced is most small and large companies won’t sponsor a team that does not have a tax I.D. number. This has been costly for each family, so next year we would like to incorporate fundraising. Some ideas we have are as follows:

Bake sales at our home school co-op: need permission from the director

Carwarsh in HEB parking lot: need to write to or ask manager Combined family garage sale

Threats

Sponsorship Scheduling Funding

Mow yards. Ask neighbors, post ad on Facebook, home school message boards (CHOK)

Hold a workshop for students we know in the community on a Saturday this summer. Charge $10 a person. Teach simple block programming and how to follow simple building instructions

Outreach PlanWe were very fortunate to have Alief Early College mentor us during

our rookie year this year. We have been trying hard to not feel overwhelmed, so we have not focused on outreach this season so far. Some ideas on how we will reach out to our community during the remainder of this season and into the 2019-2020 season are:

Pay it forward by finding a rookie team to mentor next season Hold a free workshop for our younger siblings (the next generation of

FTC competitors) to give them a headstart on learning block programming and building with metal parts.

Prepare a short video about the challenge and FTC and present it to our home school co-op during the end of the year program

Attend our co-op’s academic fair to showcase our robot, any awards we received, and our completed engineering notebook.

Building and Growing our Team We hope to add Liam and Jack’s sister to the team next year. She has

been watching some of our meetings and practices and is very interested in participating with us next year.

At our co-op’s end of the year program, part of our presentation will include encouraging others to either join our team or start their own.

We are a very young FTC team of 6th-9th graders. We all have younger siblings, who will join the team as they get older. Within the next 3 years, 6 additional siblings (4 boys and 2 girls) will be old enough to participate on our team. They have already started in FLL Jr. this season.

Cost Analysis and Budget2018-2019 Season