22 July 2006

Finally, Back To Robotics Training After Several Months Of Waiting – And NJRC Is Just Round The Corner! That Means We’re Gotta Catch Up With The Training...

We Started Off With The Usual Competition Briefings. We Didn’t Purchase The Real Playfield So We Had To Make Do With A Layout Of It. Every Detail Was Explained, Every Question Was Answered – Looks Like It Wasn’t So Bad As We Thought.

And We’re Back To The School’s IT Resource Room After A Short Break, Waiting For Instructions To Get Cracking. We Were Required To Draw Out A Proposal Of Our Ideas And Submit It To Our Instructor. Once He Approves It, We Start The Thinking And Planning.



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24 July 2006

A Day After And We’re Back! As Usual We Rushed To The IT Resource Room As Soon As The Clock Hit 1.30 Sharp. This Time, Our Instructor Was Sick And Couldn’t Come – Hey, We Still Can Work It Out! Can We?
We Had To Work Alone With Our Other Teams In The Silent, Yet Rowdy Room… We Spent 3 Hours, Racking Our Brains And Finally Came Out With Our Temp. Product – I Mean A Robot =D

Loyalty To Robotics Does It.





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THE RESEARCH – PART 1

25 July 2006

Today, We Did Some Research On The NJRC Theme, “Rig Attack”. Various Scientists Did A Experiment And Concluded That Our Oil Reserves Are Estimated To Be Used Up In 33 Years. The Experiment Was Helded In 1987, That Means Me Only Have 14 More Years Before We Run Out Of Oil!

Oil Is An Important Type Of Fuel That Provides The Things Around Us With Energy For Our Daily Activities.

Oil Directly Obtained From Oil Rigs Are Called “Crude Oil”.

Some Products Made From Crude Oil

Kerosene

Diesel

Petrol



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29 July 2006

It’s A Saturday And We’re Had A Callback For Robotics. Our Trainer Wasn’t
Sick Anymore – Thank Goodness! And Yep, Today’s The 2nd Half Of “ You Better Build A Robot”.

Hey, What’s The Big Idea? Ok We Can’t Reveal The Finally Product Yet Cause
1. Haven’t Taken Pictures To Put On Journal
2. It’s Not Finalized Yet
3. Still Have To Touch It Up And Add The Attachments

How We Envy U- Sonikal’s “ All Terrain ” Robot. It’s Sleek, Short And It Really Looks The Way It Does The Missions.

Our “Hero” , Mr Tay , Is Now Teaching In The Afternoon Sessions… So He Can’t Help Us Out With Our Robotics… Aww…



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31 July 2006

We Did Our Touch Ups On Our Robots And They Look Great Now! Well, Not So Great :D

Whoa, Our Teammates Didn’t Come… But I’ll Forgive Them…
We Still Could Handle It, With The Help Of The Instructor.

The Construction Progress Moved Slowly – Slow And Steady Wins The Race! Once We Are Done With Constructing, We’ll Go On With The Programming, And Then, The Booths.

We’re Looking Forward For Our Booth’s Marketing Gimmick To Be As Good As Last Year’s!



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1 August 2006

It’s A Tuesday And It’s The First Day Of August, Well, That Shows We Don’t Have Much Time! I Am Really Looking Forward For September – There’s NJRC, And Teacher’s Day! Woot… Because We Were So Dedicated To NJRC In September, Our Parents Had To Cancel Our Family Vacations. But We’re Still More Interested In NJRC :D

The Pictures Are Up! Presenting Our Robot…

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THE RESEARCH – PART 2
“What Is Crude Oil?”

Petroleum a.k.a crude oil is a black, dark brown or greenish liquid found in porous rock formations in the earth. The American Petroleum Institute, in its Manual of Petroleum Measurement Standards (MPMS), defines it as "a substance, generally liquid, occurring naturally in the earth and composed mainly of mixtures of chemical compounds of carbon and hydrogen with or without other nonmetallic elements such as sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen."


Petroleum is found in porous rock formations in the upper strata of some areas of the Earth's crust. It consists of a complex mixture of various hydrocarbons, largely of the alkane series, but may vary much in appearance and composition. Petroleum is used mostly, by volume, for producing fuel oil and petrol (gasoline), both important "primary energy" sources (IEA Key World Energy Statistics). Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. 88% of all petroleum extracted is processed as fuel; the other 12% is converted into other materials such as plastic. Since petroleum is a non-renewable resource, many people are worried about peak oil and eventual depletion in the near future. Due to its continual demand and consequent value, oil has been dubbed black gold.

The combining form of the word petroleum is petro-, as in petrodiesel (petroleum diesel).


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We Started Off With Programming For The Day… We We’re Re-Briefed About The Competition Playfield And We’re Asked To Think About What We Should Program The Robot To Do.

Firstly We Are DISCOURAGED To Use Timer Programs As Timers Are Not As Accurate As Rotation Censors When You’re At The Actual Playfield.

We Tried Various Methods Of Programming – Managed To Get Some Help From Our Instructors And Our Fellow Teams.

Here’s What We Came Out With…


[A PICTURE OF OUR PROGRAMMING IS ON THE NEXT PAGE]

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Explanation Of Our Programming
We are going to connect 4 sensors to our RCX. One touch sensor plus a light sensor to port 1, rotation sensor to port 2 and one light sensor to port 3.

Look at our programming to see how to use both light and touch sensor on port 1.

1) Float All Motor

This allows all motor to turn freely. Without it, you will find it difficult to turn your robot's wheels while the program is running. This is because all motor by default are on ABC stop.


2) Wait For Light=100

We now wait for light at port 1 to sense a value 98 (almost 100). Since our light sensor when looking at black and white of the playfield will only give value of 30+ to 50+, we will never get the value of 98. However we have also connected a touch sensor to port 1. When touch sensor is pressed, the value received equal 100.

3)Nested Rotation Fork

This is to help us jump to certain portion of our program. For example we have managed to go from the Helipad to BASE 1 then try to collect the buoy behind truck but failed. If we want to try again, all we needed to do is to run the program again but turn your wheels until rotation sensor at port 2 shows a reading between 10 to
20 before pressing the touch sensor. The nested rotation fork will run the blue jump and land at the portion that does the collection of buoy behind truck.

Pleased To Say The Websites Are Up! It’s Been A Week Since Our Last Robotics Training Due To CA2 Exams.

We Still Did Our Webpages And Journals During Our Free Time…

Here’s A Little Sneak Peek At Our Webpage

www.qps-usonical.blogspot.com



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It’s A Day Before The Judges’ Interview (presentation). We’re Headed To The Singapore Science Centre For Tryouts On The Actual Playfield They Would Have On The Very Day Of The Competition!

Here Are Some Pics Of Our “Adventure For The Day!”

Whoa… What’s Up With The Pose?


Let’s Get To Work… *sighs*


Check Out More Of Our Pics At Our Website
www.qps-usonikal.blogspot.com