| We have completed the 2007
Botball season. This was our seventh year and what a year. We had two
teams registered with the DC Region competition -- teams
07-0129 and 07-0130. We developed our skills with Legos,
motors and sensors, the
Botball controller (XBC), programming C, documentation,
teamwork, and leadership. We are using
Interactive C v7.
Research
We had an opportunity to do some
research in robotics and get some credit with the institute that
is running Botball. Check out the
Botball Research website. Here is what we submitted for
Team 129 (which was only
Daniel Lu). Daniel received an Honorable Mention for his
work.
Workshop
The regional Botball workshop was
Saturday and Sunday, March 17 and 18, all day at the University
of Maryland. Here is who went...
|
Saturday, March
17 |
Sunday, March 18 |
Daniel Lu
Justin Gura
Jay Koby
Stuart Brothers
Bob Ekman |
Ben Kaufman
Dana Reback
Terry Sifrit
James Brent
Tom May
Chris Wikman |
Development
The Monday after the workshop we
had a serious planning session. From there on out, we met
every Wednesday, Saturday, and a few other days. We had
almost 40 Post members participate at least once. We need committed participants and lots
of snacks. We will be building robots out of Legos,
writing C code for the controllers, and documenting everything.
We kept a journal of our activities and upload
documentation to the Botball web site.
Here is a spread sheet on our
schedule. And here is our
journal. There was a new
structured
documentation process that we had to use and follow.
This year we will require a bit
more specific commitment from the key participants. You
will need to fill out the
membership form to be listed as a team member. Here
are the current members. We are keeping
attendance in the scheduled meetings to determine who gets a
Botball t-shirt after the tournament.
|
Team 129 |
Team 130 |
Zach Baer
James Brent
Stuart Brothers
Rob Chatterson
Chris Fann
Kevin Heithaus
Jay Koby |
Brandon Nishan
Dana Reback
Misha Shangold
Terry Sifrit
Alex Silvey
Arleen Thukral
David Wikman |
Stephen Carlson
Roger Ding
Chris Emr
Justin Gura
Chris Hogan |
Daniel Lu
Eliot Rudnick-Cohen
Ashish Shenoy
Elwin Wang
Brian Zhang |
Regional Tournament
The regional tournament was
Saturday, May 12, all day, at the University of Maryland.
Everyone was invited. Each team made a presentation to the
judges on their development efforts. There were seeding
rounds and competition rounds for both teams. We needed to arrive
by 8am, so we will left Lockheed Martin by 7:15am. We were
very successful at the tournament. You can see the results in
our Journal on May 12.
|
Team 129 |
Team 130 |
Presenters
Arleen Thukral
Kevin Heithaus |
Bot Handlers
Rob Chatterson
David Wikman
Ben Kaufman |
Presenters
Brian Zhang
Chris Emr |
Bot Handlers
Stephen Carlson
Justin Gura
Roger Ding |
National Conference and
Tournament
The
National Conference and Tournament was in Honolulu
Hawaii, from July 10-13, 2007. Both teems were represented,
along with a Beyond Botball team. Here are the teams.
|
Team 129 |
Team 130 |
Beyond |
Rob Chatterson
Kevin Heithaus
Ben Kaufman |
Allen Read
David Wikman
John Heithaus
(adult) |
Stephen Carlson
Roger Ding
Justin Gura |
Chris Hogan
Elwin Wang
Karen Carlson
(adult) |
Bob Ekman
(adult)
Allen Read
Ben Kaufman |
The teams had some great
challenges just getting there. Pictures, videos, and comments on
the event are on our National
Conference and Tournament web page. |
