"I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life."
-Dean Kamen

2008 News and Updates

June 5, 2008

• Today we showed our robot off at a cub scouts meeting. It was a great way for the younger kids of the community to see what we do. They were allowed to drive our robot and a few vex robots.

• On Saturday May 31, 2008 we had a can and bottle fundraiser which was very successful.

May 15, 2008

• At WPI BattleCry our team made it to the finals after having to repair our transmission which broke Friday night.  We won the Air Superiority Award for Brian Gaffey's performance.
• Our team will be showing off the robot for the Cub Scouts on Friday May 30^th 2008.

May 7, 2008

• This Friday our team will be attending the ninth annual WPI BattleCry competition at Worcester Polytech Institute.  This is an off season event that we attended last year and we are the returning champion for the competition.

• Our website won the Website Excellence Award this year.  We are excited because we started this website with the game this year and we scored higher than 80% on it.  It is displayed below the high school link.  Our team hopes to do even better next year with using Dreamweaver instead of FrontPage.

• Our team was filmed and a documentary was made and entered in our high school film festival competition.  It was nominated for best editors.  If it wins an award then it will appear on Comcast On Demand under Get Local.  To see the trailer CLICK HERE.  You need QuickTime player to watch the trailer.

• On Monday April 28, 2008 our team will be showing off our robot for the school board committee after their meeting and talk about the two regionals we  entered this year.

• This past Thursday we finished up with the kids in the Lego Logo program we started at the elementary schools.  We had the robot and a trackball for some of the kids to drive around with, as well as helping them finish up their projects that they have been working on for the past five weeks.

• We have the mentors and parent volunteers working on the project for next year, starting with fundraising.

• With the Boston and Manchester Regionals finished, the robotics club is now preparing for the leisurely WPI Battle Cry Event at Worcester on May 10th and 11th.  We have been receiving a lot of press in the Boston Globe and The Walpole Times due to our second place finish at the Boston Regional.  There are links to these articles on our 'Media' page.  Also, today a number of kids went to the Old Post Road Elementary School to help with their robotics program.  A documentary of the 2008 robotics season, called Nuts and Bots, will be playing at the Sixth Annual Walpole Film Festival on May 2nd.  A trailer of the documentary can be seen here.  Enjoy the warm weather! 

• We have added some pictures and videos from the BAE Systems Granite State Regional up in Manchester, NH. Feel free to check it out on the media page.

• We are getting ready for our Boston Regional next week.  The program team is right now trying to perfect our code for the hybrid mode at the beginning of the match.

• We are trying to finish up some designs on our prototype robot to eventually bring final product materials over to our competition robot at our next regional in Boston, MA from 3/26/08 to 3/29/08.  Our team is right outside of Boston and we are encouraging students from all the schools to attend this regional since this one is close so that driving to the competition is not a big hassle.

• Our team have sent some members down to the local elementary schools to help teach the younger kids about robotics using the Lego MindStorm kits with the NXT model.  They were all excited!

• The Art team is also working on making some new panels for the Boston Regional to display sponsors on our robot.

• We got back from Manchester, NH this weekend after finishing in the quarter-finals of the competition.  Our team was ranked twelfth overall going into the playoffs out of 40 or so teams there.  Now we are perfecting our autonomous code and rebuilding our prototype so that it will be a working replica of our main robot.  We are currently adjusting our gears so that we will have a faster robot by the time Boston roles around.  The drivers will continue practicing on the prototype. 

• We are getting ready for the competition.  The RoboRebels will be attending the Regional Events at Manchester, NH and Boston, MA. To get more details into the two regional events, go to the links for each regional on our "Team Resources" page

• We have the Art Team working on our mascot for the competitions and designing side panels for the robot.

• Also we are in the process of fixing up our prototype so that it is similar to our final robot that got shipped up to Manchester, NH.  We are altering the elevator slightly and fixing transmission encoders so that the programmers have something to work on and get more exact readings than they were getting using the 2007 robot.

• The robot has been shipped!  Surprisingly everything went relatively well.  Only yesterday it seemed nearly impossible that the robot would be ready to be sent off to Manchester today, but everything came together this morning.  The encoders were successfully mounted, so we can now tell the elevator to rise and fall to certain heights.  This will be very useful in autonomous mode.  In retrospect on the build season as a whole, we would agree that everything went pretty well (although this did involve a couple of sleepless nights).  All we have to do now is rest (finally) and prepare for our trips to Manchester next Wednesday and to Boston in March.  Luckily for the programmers, we built a prototype so they can continue to work out the kinks with their code.

• Go to the Media Section and click on Ship Day to see images of our robot as it was being sent out

• Atlanta 2005 Videos are back online.  Also, more pictures have been added to "Crunch Time 2008" and some more videos have been added to "Building the Robot 2008".

• The Program and Sensor groups made a fantastic break through late last night and today as they enabled three sonar sensors to ping simultaneously, recording accurate results.  This will allow our robot to stay in a straight line, following the wall.

• The manufacturing group is also trying to work out a few minor problems with our elevator system. 

• With only a matter of days until the robot has to be shipped, our team is now in full throttle.  We are perfecting the elevator and kicker actuator for the prototype and plan to have a completely functional prototype very shortly.  Likewise, the manufacturing team is still working on the final robot which will obviously be much more precise than our current prototype.  Today, the website was submitted for the website award and we also added more pictures to the media page.  The programmers are also busy as usual, working on sonar and scouting spreadsheets.

• This week our programming team is progressing well on their projects.  "We are putting the finishing touches on perfection," says Roger Culp, our team programming mentor.  We also have kids working PID Controller Theory, Sonar, and Encoders.

• The manufacturing group is working on our elevator system which will lift the Trackball off, over, and on the overpass.  We are close to finishing this but we still have a  week and a half of hard work before ship day.

• The art design group has ordered team uniforms and will be working on fixing up our robot crate.  We hope that they can make it as eye-appealing as possible as it will remain in our pit for the games.

• We here at web design are putting the last minute adjustments to our website for the website award at the competition.  We have uploaded two articles that were written by a parent and previously submitted to the local newspaper.  Also check out our sponsor donation form if you want to help us out.

• The Media page was updated so be sure to check out all the latest pictures and videos!

• Our older site is apparently still up, but we are talking with the people who run that server to get it to redirect to our current site. So, anyone who comes across that site, we just wanted to let you know that site is no longer updated and this is our current site and to keep an eye on this site for further team updates.

• With under three weeks left until ship date, our team is working 'round the clock to get our robot up and running.  We have a rolling chassis and plan to have a self-moving robot by later on tonight.  Keep checking back to see the most recent news!  

• Groups page added (check it out to see what we are doing)

• Sponsor page updated

• Contact Us page added

• New Site Layout

• Mentors page updated

• Media page updated (WPI 2007 Pictures added)

• Media page updated (WPI 2007 Videos added, Atlanta 2005 Videos temporarily removed - see associated video page for details)

• Sponsor page updated

• Link to Walpole High School added

• Quotes page added here.

• Last Saturday at 10 AM kickoff began as FIRST revealed what the game will be for 2008.  It's called "FIRST Overdrive" and, to put it simply, it's a racing game that involves giant 40 inch exercise balls, called Track Balls. For a more detailed description of the game watch this video made by FIRST or read these manuals.  Since the release of the game, the Walpole RoboRebels have been working furiously on designs and prototypes for the new robot. Also keep in mind that this website is brand new, so many of the sites pages are in the early stages of development.  Keep checking back to see the latest news of the robotics club as the next 6 weeks will keep us very busy!