Robotics NewsNovember 25, 2017 Iron Reign Qualifies for Oklahoma State Championship!We hope you've all had a great Thanksgiving break. Iron Reign, SEM's premiere robotics team kicked off their break with a competition in Oklahoma where they qualified for the Oklahoma State Championship to be held in February. They were the Winning Alliance Captain team and won the 2nd Inspire Award and Control Award. Now they are turning their attention to the North Texas Region where they are the defending Regional Champions. Iron Reign and SEM Robotics now need your help as we seek to host our first Qualifying Tournament on December 16th.
Calling All Volunteers The PTSA will host the concession stand. We will sell a variety of snack foods in addition to a taco/salad/nacho bar. We would love to have your assistance with donations as well as your signing up to work a shift. Proceeds will go to the PTSA to fund our events/programs. Please use this volunteer form to sign up to help with concessions: https://semagnetschool.membershiptoolkit.com/volunteer/18472
The team photo shows (left to right): Darshan Patel, Jayesh Sharma, Omar Ramirez, Max Virani, Tycho Virani and Nick Macabare. Please view our photo gallery to view pics of the mayor, team members, young learners, full SEM banner and robots. Iron Reign Robotics gives a talk on July 11, 2015.Iron Reign consists of robotics competition teams in FLL and FTC. We've been competing since 2009 and some of us have been active in robotics for 10 years. Intro to Gyrosby Caitlin, Tycho, Max, Omar, Jayesh and Darshan Task: Share what we've learned about motion sensingOn July 11th we gave a talk for a classroom full of adult members of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG) where we shared what we've learned and are still learning about motion sensors, particularly gyros. The talk took place at theDallas Makerspace. Our thanks to DPRG, Steve and Doug for hosting us and recording and editing the video. The presentation slides can be downloaded here. We hope this helps other FTC teams who are exploring the same subject. ReflectionsWe are fairly happy with how the presentation went. We made a few mistakes and omissions in our talk and could improve our delivery. We should probably have added one last slide of "dos and don'ts" to make it simpler for teams that are just starting with gyros, so we'll do that in a follow-up post. Jayesh got a bit overly emphatic about the quality of the gyro in the 2nd gen Moto G. The truth is we don't have the Moto G, so this is not a first hand assessment. But if you Google the gyro on the Moto G you'll see stuff like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleCardboard/comments/2syeb2/moto_2nd_gen_gyroscope_fix_request/ So it seems that using this phone with Google Cardboard leads to a very jerky experience that probably means difficulty using it on a robot. But it's also possible that the gyro is fine and it's the built-in sensor fusion with the accelerometers and magnetometers that is the problem. We are interested in feedback from other teams that have this phone to see what they think of its gyro. We know of at least one other team that is planning to test this phone's gyro. We are also interested in feedback from other teams on which external gyro they plan to use. The easy choice is the hitechnic gyro that we've mostly used in the past. But the truth is that it is a very drifty gyro and there are probably better choices out there now. We are looking at a few ourselves and plan to post the results. We estimate we've put about 90 person hours over 3 meets and a lot of homework into this presentation. And that doesn't count the time we've put into actually learning how to use gyros from sensing through to control. If we'd spent even half that time working on our FTC judging presentation last year we'd be in much better shape. We learned of some teams at the South Super Regional that spent much more time practising their presentations. We have to learn how to set aside time in the weeks leading up to competition when our focus has been only on the robot. Frontiers of Flight Moon DayJuly 17, 2015 Please view our photo gallery to view pics of the event. Learning Maker FaireJune 20, 2015 Please view our photo gallery to view pics of the event. Learning Maker FaireMarch 28, 2015 Please view our photo gallery to view pics of the event. Mansfield, TXJanuary 24, 2015 Please view our photo gallery to view pics of the event. |
Iron Reign (team 6832), The School of Science and Engineering and the Dallas ISD STEM Department are happy to announce that we are hosting a FIRST Tech Challenge qualifying tournament at our Townview campus December 16th. Between 28 and 32 North Texas robotics teams will compete for awards and a limited number of advancements to the Regional Championship to be held in February.
On August 7, 2015 SEM robotics teams Iron Reign and Imperial Robotics inspired returning DISD students to think of themselves as budding engineers and scientists. At the Major's Back to School Fair and as guests of Dallas City of Learning, the team demonstrated their creations to Mayor Rawlings and hundreds of kids. Many students learned to operate the robots and learned about robotics opportunities available to them at all levels in Dallas ISD.