Competition

The competition went rather well, and all the kids seemed to have a great time. Unfortunately, my duties in the pits prevented me from seeing most of the competition, but from what I heard, all the teams had robots out there driving.

The simple South robots did very well, and held the high score record in the morning. They had trouble getting all the kids to WPI, and ended up with only ten kids there between the two teams. I had a hard time tracking down the South team most of the day, but it turned out that they had grabbed a classroom and were practicing there.

The north robots proved too complicated, and their grabbers too slow to be effective. I had some trouble in the pits with the students, and had to at one point

physically take their radio to prevent them from interfering with a robot that was playing a match. Other people told me of similar problems. They did have one amazing driver,

The Doherty robots suffered from a lack of practice, which is understandable giving their short build season. They spent much of their time in the pits debugging.

Both South robots got into the elimination rounds, and ended up facing each other. With the same autonomous mode, both robots performed a very nice synchronized routine. The winning robot went up against the team that ended up winning the whole competition, and could have won if they had better strategy (they discovered the winning strategy, blocking Team 10’s tube sweep by driving into it, too late).

All teams were restless about waiting for the finals to end and the award ceremony to begin.

C.2

Sean

C.2.1 Doherty

Early September, initial meeting • Extremely enthusiastic

• Half a dozen people there at least. All engineering teachers • Very friendly, not afraid to ask questions

• They like the competition aspect

• Were slightly wary of the Programming aspect, like others are, but have faculty that knows C++

• Kathy was concerned about money (as is her job)

• Want to start 2 or 3 teams, very surprised, and happy to hear

C.2.2 North High

Early September, initial meeting of the year

• Money was a large concern, however they had a good chance of getting a grant from EMC

• Programming in C is a big issue, Nina Steinberg doesn’t know of any teacher who knows it

• They would like to get it integrated with a class

• Gear Up is a grant to help students get to college campuses, could possibly be used for getting to WPI

• Nina Steinberg will meet with tomorrow to discuss the program

November 26th, 2004

• Showed 2 students how to use sensors. One student knew how to already • Showed how to connect the two connectors for the three sensors (Justin’s neat

C.2.3 South High November 29th, 2004

• Students seem quite interested

• have redesigned each robot at least once • no real programming as of yet

o had to help them write something

December 2nd, 2004

• Huge issues programming the robot (with computer, not the code itself) • “Smart” group has been testing their drive train quite a bit

• Both groups have been practicing driving extensively • After practicing, they have been redesigning

December 3rd, 2004

• Went with Brad to program their robots with framework 1.3 using Brad’s laptop • They were making final preparations + practicing mostly

• Teachers were making sure that students knew when and where they were supposed to be on Sunday.

• Helped kids from one team make a simple autonomous mode

• Teacher talked about how the teams were rebuilding all the time, and how much he liked it

• One team over the past 3 days had chopped their robot in half to make it turn more easily.

C.3

Justin

C.3.1 North High 11-21-04

Went to the shop helped install the software on the computer. There was one problem with installing it on the computer that was connected to the schools network. Explained the problem with the radios receivers. Programmed one robot to drive with the radio. Only one team had a driving chassis. We are supposed to return next Monday to help.

C.3.2 South High 11-21-04

One team was doing really well and had a driving robot and was working on a mechanism. The other team was working on there drive train and the hole robot did not look as promising. Alexander helped two students with programming why I tried to help with mechanical aspects of the robot. I was really impressed at one student who made a point that this in not about winning its about learning. I have to wire up the sensors and drop them off tomorrow.

C.3.3 Doherty 11-24-04

Went to Doherty today the school just got there kit in that day. They started brain storming using the parts lots of hands on work. Some really cool ideas but not all of them were feasible. They would have liked a longer build time.

C.3.4 North High 12-02-04

• We think the teacher was enjoying the program and was happy to see that some students were really getting something out of the experience.

• The teacher was concerned about the amount of time they had to build the robot and would like to see a longer build season for first year teams.

• The teacher was frustrated with the WPS systems way of handling money and worried about the getting the kits on time

• He would be interested in competing with the other Worchester public schools. • Some of the students were not that you would not think would be building robot s

were doing amazing things with the kits,

• One team had a robot that was of good quality and looked like it would do well in the tournament

• The school came up with a very clever idea to make a robot turn (i.e. adding tape to the front wheels so they would slide).

• Students were having a hard time programming the robot to do tasks that they wanted.

• They needed the most help in programming and a few mechanical adjustments. • The second team was a little disappointing most of the students were goofing off

and there robot did not look to be in good condition. The robot would drive but it would not lift a tube into the 2x scoring depot.

Appendix D:

Interview Transcripts