See details on the attached pdf and through the links above.
Registration Info:
Registration opens on June 10, 2010 and closes on June 17, 2010.
If more than 8 teams apply, there will be a blind drawing to determine which teams will play.
Registration fee will be paid at the IRI, with Checks made payable to
“Perry Meridian High School / VEX Competition”.
The Indiana Robotics Invitational is known as the best and largest FRC off-season event (Over 80 teams this year!). This year teams will have a chance to test their robotics skills in the VEX Classroom Competition.
The VEX Classroom Competition is a fun challenge for anyone, whether they’re familiar with the VEX Robotics Design System or not. The parts limitations make the challenge not only affordable, but also forces you to make some interesting design trade-offs. Very similar to the early years of FRC.
Here’s an example of the type of robot that can be built for this challenge. This robot was built by Lower Marion High Schools in preparation for the upcoming 2010 National TSA Conference VEX Robotics Swept Away Championship.
We’ve limited entries to 8 teams to ensure that the tournament can be run at a relaxed pace that allows participants to still be part of the FRC action at IRI.
This is a great opportunity for teams to show off their VEX skills and be a part of one of the biggest robotics events of the year!
It would be interesting to line up the All-Star Challenge with IRI (maybe a few days before or after?), and keep similar applications for the two events.
As a not-so-far-fetched idea, it would be interesting to make the All-Star application process similar to IRI’s.
Cool event! A few of my high school friends and I are setting up a team for this, or at least trying to. I love the design rules, relaxed in some places and strict in others not typically seen in competitive robotics.
12" base, 4 wheel drive with Omni’s on the front for steering. Arm is lifted by two motors on a dual gear system. 12" arm extension on a rack/pinion gear system. Basket (design totally stolen from a team in Texas I saw at the TSA Nationals) is on a servo to dump it over the wall. All the weight is over the rear wheels for extra traction. 5 motors and 1 servo.
(Just as an aside my roboteers really missed the “unlimited non-electronic parts” that we work under for VRC.)
Jack representing Team 1640 (sab-BOT-age) took the event with 11 wins 0 losses. “Chris is me” from FRC 2791 Shaker Robotics took second place.
It was a small but pretty cool event. I thought it was interesting that Chris showed up with a mostly working chassis at 8AM and by the finals had a pretty strong robot.
Jack did very well driving the wheels off the robot to make an unblemished win streak and to score 49 points in a single match.
Someone from 1640 took a video of the final matches. 2791’s robot breaks early in both matches so I took some of my own video to demonstrate that it did work. I’ll have the latter edited soon, but for now check the gallery for my robot.
1640 was an excellent competitior with a perfectly designed scoop and arm. I really liked how it picked up when the arm was horizontal, so when the driver lifts the arm to hold the pieces the end effector moves away from the wall rather than toward it with a normal arm.
I still have one of your team’s motors. If you can PM me an address to send it back I’d be happy to.
Jen S from Team 1640 shot this video of Jack driving the Team 1640 scoop flipper at IRI. There are two preliminary matches shown and the two finals against Team 2791 Chris is me’s robot.
There were problems with the robot flicking balls over the outside wall. At home we practice in a regular Clean Sweep field, the walls are taller. Jack and I talked about trying to change the angle of the scoop but it changed how the green balls scooped up. So we left it alone for the tournament.
Jack’s average score was 40-48 points per match.
Thanks again to the other teams that played and to Karthik for setting this up.
And a big thank you to the Texas TSA team that was driven by a girl with long black hair, your scoop design worked really well. When we put it on the servo to flip it it worked great. (Her design carried it up and over the robot and then the wall)
No, it was the gameplay court. In talking to Jack afterwards, he said the floor wasn’t an issue, the shorter walls than Clean Sweep was.
From my view the floor was better, both teams baskets would slide along the floor, there would have been sticking / jabbing issues with the foam (and the interlock fingers in the foam)
I also liked the center towers on this field better, they were slightly bigger than the Clean Sweep triangles.
I’m glad the surface was tiled for the event. I planned on some delrin on the bottom of the manipulator in order for it to try and slide on foam, but I doubt it would have worked very well. Turning was also a lot less of a hassle than it could have been, seeing as I had a relatively long wheelbase with low torque in each wheel. You can’t exactly do a six wheel drop in Vex.
The center towers could hold several soccer balls and were big enough to cause me to worry. My design priorities were first and foremost the footballs since they had a 6 point swing, but with 3 “locked” points per soccer ball, not scoring in the high goals was a pretty big strategic hit to take. Under normal design and build constraints I would have ensured my mechanism could potentially score in those goals. However I had 3 hours, not 3 weeks.
