ART840 » Aragon Robotics Team 840

The Aragon Robotics Team is a student-based, student-built, and student-run robotics team centered at Aragon High School, 900 Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo, CA 94402. We usually meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the school year, from after school until 5:00 PM.

"To create a world where science and technology are celebrated... where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes."
—Dean Kamen, Founder

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), established in 1989 by Dean Kamen, encourages the exploration of visions, the practice of gracious professionalism, and the establishment of lasting impacts.

Today is our first meeting of the school year and we have a great turn out! We have about fifty members on the team. Our next competition is CalGames on the 23rd of October. Currently the new build members are beginning with training on the machines and the veterans are working on modifying the robot in preparation for competition. Media is working on training their new members in the basic design programs. We are off to a great start this year and we are really looking forward to it!

-Sophia

ART will be having its End-of-Year Potluck on Thursday May 6 from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at Aragon High School in room 321. To all robotics families: Please bring enough food to feed 6-10 people. We will be celebrating this year's accomplishments and discussing the goals for next year.

ART will be manning a booth at this year's Maker's Faire, held on May 22 and 23 at the San Mateo Expo Center. ART will be diplaying its Breakaway robot, dubbed "Chewman" after two of our mentors, to the attendees of the Maker Faire. We hope that you can come to show your support!

-Lauren

After SVR, the team convened to elect a new executive council, which then selected next year's managers. Our new leaders are Anna Olson as Chief Executive Officer, Alex Phinney as Chief Operations Officer, Sophia Wu as Chief Financial Officer, and Crystal Cheung as Chief Information Officer. Our new managers are Yuzo Makitani and Sarah Manning as co-shop managers, Zhili Liang as electronics manager, and Anthony Lu as programming manager. Sophia Wienbar is media manager and Krista Neill is compliance manager. Congratulations to all!

-Lauren

Competition is over, things are settling down again. The team held elections during March, and a new executive council was voted upon. New managers were selected as well, to serve for the 2010-2011 school year.

Our end of year potluck is coming up on Thursday, May 6th. It will be held in Room 321. Be on the lookout for a flyer with details!

Freshman recruitment is now in progress. If anyone reading this is interested in applying and needs an application, please shoot us an email at aragon.robotics.team@gmail.com!

Below are links to a slideshow and video we will be presenting to potential applicants; check it out!

-Anna

Build completed the robot and tested everything. The completed robot, except for the bumpers and cover were shipped on Tuesday. The entire team gathered outside to wave goodbye as the Fed-Ex truck drove away. This is the first time in about two years that have we shipped a complete and working robot, making the entire team very proud.

Media began making the streamers and received t-shirts and sweatshirts. They handed these out to team members, teachers and mentors.

-Sophia

This is the end of build season so we are back on our regular schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:15 to 5:00.

Build assembled the clutch and ordered all neccessary spare parts. They also tested different power sources for the kicker, and the robot was test driven around the workroom. Programming removed all of the glitches in the robot code. They also placed safety procautions on the kicker and worked some more with the tracking camera. Electronics is currently working on replacing the wooden electronics board with a transparent lucite one.

Media placed t-shirt orders and finished making buttons, which can be found below. This year media decided to go for the spirit award, so the orders for spirit supplies were placed. They also met with a mentor, Ms. Ward, and dicussed pit set up, scouting forms and spirit boxes.

-Sophia

The design for this year's t-shirt is finished! The theme this year is "healthy bots, healthy minds," so we based the design around that. A link to the shirt deign can be found below.

-Sophia

Build reorganized the work room and shop, while CAD finalized its drawings. Electronics improved the design of the electronics board. We are currently using a wooden board to test the chassis, but we plan on replacing it with a transparent acrylic board. Programming wrote the code for the tracking camera and tested it.

Media finished button designs and buttons were made for competition. They also finalized the t-shirt design and yearbook page.

On Monday February 1st, some robotics team members manned a both at the club fair for incoming freshman. They drove the robot around in order to draw the attention of the the fair's attendees, and to talk about the team to those who were interested. On Tuesday February 2nd, Dan Moroni, a veteran of the team, visited.

-Sophia

If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and see how we're doing for yourself. Unitil February 23, we will be meeting Monday through Thursday from 3:30 to 7, and on Friday from 3:30 to 5. Meetings are held in room 150 (at the back of the school, next to the tennis courts).

Competition is on March 19 and 20 at San Jose State University. Come and watch the robots compete!

Build team got the robot chassis up and running, and they continued work on prototyping parts of the bot. The camera was installed, and the tracking component is currently being programmed. CAD team worked on compiling the CAD drawings so build team could start machining them.

Media finalized the newsletter and the link can be found below.

-Sophia

If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and see how we're doing for yourself. Unitil February 23, we will be meeting Monday through Thursday from 3:30 to 7, and on Friday from 3:30 to 5. Meetings are held in room 150 (at the back of the school, next to the tennis courts).

Competition is on March 19 and 20 at San Jose State University. Come and watch the robots compete!

Build team finished prototyping and decided on the robot's main components. Drive team took the chassis for a test drive. Some minor issues with the chassis were resolved. CAD team started creating CAD drawings.

Media team finished the newsletter's basic layout, which after a few more edits, will be posted online within the week. Preliminary sketches of the t-shirt design were completed.

-Sophia, Ari and Monica

If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and see how we're doing for yourself. For the next five weeks, we will be meeting Monday through Thursday from 3:30 to 7, and on Friday from 3:30 to 5. Meetings are held in room 150 (at the back of the school, next to the tennis courts).

Competition is on March 19 and 20 at San Jose State University. Come and watch the robots compete!

This week, the build team worked on brainstorming and prototyping. Our robot will most likely fill either a "middleman" or an offensive role, and may have the capability of moving between the field's 3 sections by traversing the foot-tall bumps. 10 different kicking or other ball propulsion mechanisms were prototyped, with votes pending on which is the most effective. Additionally, the robot is up and running! (now we just need to add the fancy stuff)

The media team finished a rough draft of the Winter 2010 Newsletter. The tentative publishing date is next Friday.

Overall, the team as a whole is way ahead of where it was last year. Put it all down to the extra time spent on drivetrain and the like over the past two months!

-Lauren

If you're in the area, feel free to drop by and see how we're doing for yourself. For the next five weeks, we will be meeting Monday through Thursday from 3:30 to 7, and on Friday from 3:30 to 5. Meetings are held in room 150 (at the back of the school, next to the tennis courts).

The team attended Kickoff at Woodside High School at 10 AM (A couple of team members braved the early hours to watch the official Kickoff at San Jose State University, broadcast live at 7 from Manchester, NH). Directly following the 2 hour long program, members of the various robotics teams present got together to brainstorm ideas. The general consensus was that the game, Breakaway, would be nothing short of an exciting challenge.

After lunch, ART got together at Armaan's house to brainstorm and determine which approach the team would take in designing a robot to play in the game. In past years, we've tried to do too many things at once; we are making a conscious effort this year to limit how much we attempt to accomplish, and to make sure that what we do decide to do is done to the best of our ability.

-Lauren (Media Manager)

Our website is currently undergoing remodeling! Updates will be slow, as our webmaster is learning on the job. Hopefully, the new site will be up by the end of this season.

Some of the planned changes include a new home page, and a more accessible overall layout. This will involve much moving around of pages, but it should make the website simpler in the long run. Feedback, once the new site is up, will be welcome!

-Anna

The first days of November should prove to be an exciting beginning for the whole team, with the development of skills for the new members and innovative new ideas on the team's demo robot!

When you walk into the workroom, vets and newbies alike are busy with brainstorming new designs for their subgroup projects. The newbie kick-off started after the Calgames and every week are now consumed with new ideas and learning the in's and out's of what the Robotics team is all about. Initiations, though trivial, have united the new members with the vets through hand games and inside jokes. The workroom is now overflowing with gossip, laughter, and most importantly new perspectives on design. Currently, the veterans are working on a demo bot as stated above. Some ideas that have been suggested so far are t-shirt cannon's and a multi-functional robot that can interact with an audience. With the unfamiliar concepts at hand, the vets have concealed the whiteboard with inventive ways to make this bot happen. The vets, though are challenged, reveal determination within them as they attempt at this rather difficult bot.

-Crystal (newbie)

The first two weeks of October should prove to be an exciting beginning to a month, with team's Fall Potluck as well as CalGames Robotics Competition!

Invitations to the Potluck are being sent out around now, which will be held on Friday, October 2nd from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM, in Room 321 (Mr. Richmond's room) at Aragon High School - 900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo CA 94402. We hope to see families of new as well as old members, in addition to sponsors, teachers, mentors, and everyone else involved with Aragon Robotics!

CalGames is also coming up in less than a month! It's being hosted by Woodside High School this year (home to the Woodside-Carlmont Wildhats, Team 100), on Saturday October 10th. Take a look at the flyer (below), and we'll be seeing all the friends and family of ART at Woodside on the 10th! Right?

-Anna

Thanks to the hard work of a couple of team members, led by the CFO Sophia Wu and assisted by Ms. Ward, the team now has sufficient funds to compete in the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition at the Silicon Valley Regional! After considerable stress over not having enough money to last the 2009-2010 year and the difficulties in fundraising, it's great to know we'll be participating in SVR once again. A big thank you to CIM3, SRI International, the San Mateo Union High School District, and everyone else who donated to ART--we truly wouldn't be here without you!

-Anna

It looks like we're off to a good start for this year! The huge growth in team size (nearly doubled since 08-09) was unexpected, but is definitely a plus--the great ART experience is now reaching out to 40 or so Aragon students!

The bulk of the teams's growth was, of course, owing to the many new members ("newbies"). Currently, our new members are hard at work acquiring the skills and knowledge they'll need later on in the season. Lectures and practice exercises (basic machining) is what they're doing for the first few weeks.

Veteran members, on the other hand, are working hard on CalGames modifications. The ideas are all there; now all that's left to do is vote on them and finalize our new design before fabrication, assembly, and testing can begin!

-Anna

Today was the team's first meeting of the 2009-2010 school year, which we hope will be another great one! So far, it looks like our team will have around 35 students, 10 or 15 of which are new members. The plans for this semester are to work on CalGame modifications, provide training for our new members, hold a "Practice Build" as a training exercise, finalize the new team By-Laws, publish a newsletter (or two), and design T-shirts/buttons that revolve around this year's theme (soon to be announced). We are hoping to have our Potluck a week or two before CalGames, at the beginning of October--keep an eye out for details!

-Anna

CIM Engineering, Inc., has generously agreed to donate another year of CIM3 hosted Collaborative Work Environment, as well as the domain name registration for this website. We are extremely grateful for their continued support, and would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to CIM Engineering!

-Anna

On Monday the 27th of July, ART is having a fundraiser at California Pizza Kitchen (CPK). For anyone who eats there and brings a flyer, CPK will donate 20% of their bill to the team.

We're new to hosting this type of fundraiser, so we don't know what to expect...but hopefully we'll be able to raiser a decent amount of money this way. Flyers are available for download here, for anyone that's interested.

-Anna

Yesterday, ART received confirmation for the registration for CalGames 2009. After worrying for some time about getting a "Tier 1" slot and securing one of the 30 limited spaces, being registered for certain was quite a relief, as well as a happy reminder of the excitement to come.

This year, CalGames will be held on Friday, October 9 and Saturday, October 10, at Woodside High School. The game is a replay of FIRST's 2009 competition, Lunacy . Friday is a set-up day, while Saturday is the competition itself--when we hope to see everyone at Woodside!

Best of luck, 840, and time to start working on CalGames modifications!

-Anna

The team held its End-of-Year Potluck on Friday, May 15, to celebrate the past year as well as introduce the team to some of our new members who were able to come.

Many team members attended the Maker Faire, held at the San Mateo County Event Center from Saturday, May 30 to Sunday, May 31. It was full of fascinating creations, exhibits, and shows, and is definitely something that the team hopes to participate in next year.

A non-mandatory meeting was held on Tuesday, June 2, after school got out, to catch up on some organization and work on the Chairbot. Last meeting of the 08-09 year!

-Anna

The Silicon Valley Regional competition is over, with much fun and hurrying at the same time. Now it's time to go home, unpack, and begin on CalGames modifications!

-Kyle

With the intensity and chaos of the last-hour robot construction before we must pack it up and ship it, everything seems to be getting done at the same time. Hope to see you at Silicon Valley Regionals, and do not forget to bolt everything on!

-Kyle

Yeah, this site is not dead, at least not anymore, and I am working to get this page updated, although as Electronics Manager, my time during meetings is not dedicated to this kind of stuff, so any updates will be slow and full of joyous learning. Bili, I thought this was your responsibility.

-Kyle