January 29, 2011: It moves!

Today's meeting was super-productive. The robot above, with all parts necessary for driving attached, is the end result. (Although we still plan to build the upper deck to store the electronics better and hold a mini-robot deployment mechanism.)

This burst in progress was fueled by brain power, pizza, and the electronics which were still on Pele. Our first FRC robot is now just a frame. Below, Walter disassembles it.

Overall, though, a very good day.

My Life is First

Check it out- mylifeisfirst.com

State of the Robot: January 28, 2011

Behold the big robot! As you can see from the photo above, we've got a complete robot frame and drive system and a mounted pneumatics system. The electronics are not yet attached.
A major goal of this weekend is to make the robot drivable, which will mean building an "upper deck" to mount more electronics on.

We're Live!

This is Grace writing, and my introduction isn't half as cool as Daniel's, which he is writing and posting as I type. You see, we're working on this from two different computers, at the same time, which can at times be confusing (for both us and blogger...) Anyways, we're a FIRST robotics team, which is cool. You can read all about it in Dan's post. I just wanted to say that you can find out more about FIRST through the FIRST website, http://www.usfirst.org/.

Our blog name, The Fourth Law of Robotics, is (if you haven't already gotten the reference, in which case you should reconsider reading this blog.) a reference to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

We thought it would be a clever name. But it turns out there actually IS a fourth law- well, technically a zeroth law, which Asimov later added to precede the other three. It states:

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

I guess that's good. We wouldn't want our robot to take over humanity. Or any robot, for that matter.

Also as I am writing, the awesome guys who actually do the work around here are testing the pnuematics systems we are going to use for our robot (who is yet to be named). We keep hearing big blasts of air from the other room. But we really appreciate them, because without the people who are smart and awesome and build the robot, me and Dan wouldn't have jobs. You see, we're the computer people- he does programming, and I do PR and marketing along with other random stuff.

So yeah.

I'll end my rambling now; we just tested the air system that's going to be used for the arm, and there are still some kinks to be worked out, but it's getting there! Woohoo!

Welcome to a Brand-New Blog

printf("Hello, World.");

Hello, Robolions team members, mentors, friends, and parents! Welcome to "The Fourth Law of Robotics," home to University City High School's FIRST (For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Team. We hope to use this blog to inform you about what we're up to.

You may know that we are almost three weeks into our six week FRC (First Robotics Competition) build season. The game for which we are building our robot is LogoMotion. We'll post updates here to let you all know what we're up to with building our robot (actually, two, as you can see in the game video at the link).

Programmer, signing out.