The Knights of Alloy

SooNews Staff for SooNews.ca
Saturday, February 27, 2010, 10:16AM

Local robotics team finishes construction of this year’s robot.




Tuesday saw the end of the 44-day build season for the local ADSB secondary school robotics team. This 6-week session, in which 2200 teams from around the world have been building this year’s competition robot, came to an end at midnight on Tuesday as the team’s machine was put to sleep in a giant plastic bag and sealed away in preparation for next month’s competition circuit.





This year’s robot weighs in at 140 lbs, measures 37inches long, 27 inches wide and about 40 inches tall, with an articulating grappling arm that will extend to a 7-foot height. The main purpose of this year’s game will be a form of robotic soccer, where teams of three robots will face off to score at 4-ft square corner nets on a field the size of a basketball court. Making life more complicated for the teams is the field design, which includes 1-foot high bumps in the field that the robots must traverse to get from one field sector to another. In the final stages of the games, the team can earn bonus points by reaching up and grabbing a 7-ft high horizontal bar and performing a robotic “chin-up” to raise their machine above a 20-inch high platform.

The local efforts of The Knights of Alloy students has produced a solid machine that can score points from multiple distances and angles and can also perform the bonus chin-up maneuver. A unique “Mecanum” wheel design allows the robot to crab sideways or turn on a dime, manipulating the soccer ball with ease while a pneumatic piston provides a kicker “foot” with enough force to propel the ball in excess of 30 feet – easily capable of scoring from almost anywhere on the playing surface.



In a departure of previous seasons, this year’s rules has the robot sealed in a plastic bag, with a zip-tag proving that the robot has remained untouched for the next 5 weeks, and the robot will travel with the team to Waterloo, Ontario for their first regional event, on March 25th to 27th. A second Regional in Mississauga on Easter weekend will provide qualifying opportunities for the team to earn an invitation to Atlanta for the World FIRST Robotics Championships.

Information about this competition series can be found on the league website at www.usfirst.org, while the team’s own website can provide local information and team history and can be found at www.knightsofalloy.ca.

The team will also be at the Station Mall on Saturday, Feb. 27th with some if its previous years’ robots as part of the Engineering Week displays. Members of the public can come and drive last year’s robot or watch local Elementary School Lego Champions, the Grandview Gadgets, as they demonstrate their winning design for this year’s FIRST Lego competition circuit.

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