Well, we're well into the 2010 season, and we haven't been posting here very diligently, but that doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work! Come into the shop on any week day and you can hear the sound of people talking and power tools running long after dark. As of now, Ian's time lapse video of our build season is several minutes long. Our chassis has long since been welded - another huge thanks to the people at Metal Innovations - and our brand new mecanum wheels are installed and ready to go!

The kicker team has made a lot of progress, from Chris's first mock up made of plywood and 2x4s bolted to a piece of aluminum channel to an elaborate prototype that bears a close resemblance to a ballista. Pretty soon (all the way in week four...) it will be ready to mount on the robot - Eric's department. Software is busy working on getting PID control to work with our new Java API, and even though they haven't got their hands on the robot yet, they've done some pretty awesome things. Driving our camera "Rufus" with a gyroscope was extremely entertaining.Well, that's all I have room for today. If you want information on our current robot for this season, follow this link. 

See you soon!

Dolan Murvihill

After analyzing our performance at the Oregon Regional Team 2374 came to the conclusion that our strategy for the game wasn't working as planned.

When we designed our shooter we planned for a slow moving game where robots would have difficulty moving around on the slick regolith.  The belief was that we could play the game from a distance and score points without being dumped on much.  While we didn't get dumped on much, the shooter aiming turned out to be significantly more difficult than we expected.  Even with auto tracking software, it was too difficult to accurately.

After a team meeting it was decided that we wanted to change our strategy for the Seattle Regional.  Over the past two weeks we have been fabricating components which we will add on to your robot when pits open on Thursday.  Our turret will be removed and replaced with a long pick-up mechanism which leads moon rocks into a power dumper at the top of the robot.  

The 2009 Oregon Regional is over.  Through the three days of competition Team 2374 managed a record of three wins and four losses.  Unfortunately, we were not selected to join an alliance in the elimination rounds.  Despite this, the team had a great time seeing what other teams created in their six week build period. 

From observing the matches, the greatest difficulty the Crusaderbots faced was aiming the turret.  The individual components in our robot all worked well, however the driver did not have a good perspective of which direction the turret was facing.  Furthermore, the constant motion of robots gave our auto-tracking code trouble.

Despite the problems we encountered, there is still the Seattle regional coming up from March 19th to the 21st.  In the two weeks between the regional's we hope to alter our robot to address the problems we faced.  The Oregon Regional provided a great opportunity to test out our robot and see how we can make it even better. 

You can view images from the regional in our image gallery. 

On Thursday, March 5th FIRST Robotics teams from all over the region will arrive at the Portland Memorial Coliseum for the 2009 Oregon Regional competition.  After spending 6 weeks hard at work designing their robots, teams will get the chance to show off what they have been working on. 

The event goes until Saturday, March 7th, when the final competition rounds will take place. 

For directions to the Coliseum click here.

For more information on the regional be sure to check pnwfirst's page dedicated to the regional.

Click "Read More" below for a tentative schedule of events.