【分享帖】How to Establish a RoboMaster Team - by Virginia Tech

training spl · 2019-2-19 16:49:28

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特邀撰稿人——周一品，弗吉尼亚理工州立大学大三学生， VT RoboGrinder团队负责人。

英文文案——来自麦克马斯特大学的公关经理，感谢你们的努力！

今年是RoboGrinder成立的第三年，本文总结了RoboGrinder成立以来遇到的各种困难和解决方案，希望能为海外其他团队提供一些帮助，包括如何获得学校教授的支持。

由于不同制度的区别，在海外组建团队与在国内组建团队有很大不同。对于海外团队来说，学校体系（公立/私立）的差异也是影响组建团队难度的一个非常重要的因素。

学校简介：

弗吉尼亚理工学院暨州立大学（弗吉尼亚理工大学）是一所公立、赠地研究型大学，其主校区位于弗吉尼亚州布莱克斯堡。

团队组建：

2016年9月，前团队创始人秦友明在大疆完成了为期6个月的实习后组建了团队。他给朋友们讲了一些在大疆实习的故事，包括机甲大师。

大家都表现出了参加比赛的浓厚兴趣。9月份就开始研究如何参加比赛。在2016-2017年的规则手册中，注册需要一名顾问。在这个过程中遇到的第一个问题是如何在学校找到导师。

在美国，大多数教授可能会指导和监督研究生进行论文研究，或者在教学之外在公司工作，这对教授和学校来说都是非常有利可图的。

作为一个新成立的团队，在学校找到导师是非常困难的。大多数教授在听到陌生的名字或知道工作量巨大时都会拒绝这个请求。

最终，我们找到了ECE系的Bob教授，他愿意成为我们的顾问。在沟通过程中，我们反驳了以下问题：

转换前准备不足，对比赛了解不够。
由于比赛刚刚开始，英文信息不完整。
An executive summary was not prepared. EVA (Education value added) needed to be covered in this documentation. The advantages and disadvantages need to be shown clearly. What can be learned in the competition should also be demonstrated.
Professor was not able to decide whether the students can participate in the competition or not, approval from school leadership was required.
Finding a professor who is cooperative and want to coordinate resources was the key to build our team successfully.

After several rounds of conversion, ECE department approved professor Bob as our advisor and sponsored a fund of $5000. Our team was established and would be conducting a project in AMP Lab.

Student Organization Classifications:

Student organization: It is the most common and numerous student association, which is similar to clubs and with low entry requirements. Whereas, less access to resources and insufficient funds are major obstacles to RoboMaster.
Academic Student Organization: It will benefit a lot after becoming projects in the laboratory. And different laboratories can provide different assistance according to the various equipment. For example, in the AMP Lab (Autonomous Mastery Prototyping Lab):
It subordinates to the ECE Department, with all kinds of facilities and components relating to electrical engineering such as resistors, capacitors and inductors of all types. After completing the safety training, we are all allowed to use the lab for 24 hours a day.
In addition, Professor Bob provided us with two lockers to keep the materials for robots. After becoming the project in AMP Lab, we can enjoy not only the advanced equipment and working environment, but also more resources and professional technical support.
In the beginning, 5000 dollars were given as funds by the department. But in the second year, we were told that materials could be purchased directly using AMP Lab funding, which is almost unlimited to us. As just one equipment in the lab will cost thousands of dollars, our needs are nearly nothing compared to these.

Resources and Technical Supports:

After becoming the project in AMP Lab, several funds were collected from a different department in the university. In Virginia Polytechnic University, it has special appropriations for students researching.

As a project approved by lab and professors, we will be more competitive in raising funds. Also, we successfully got access to using another lab through effective communications. These are the advantages that being a project in a lab can bring.

In fact, there is a more professional project in our university called senior design, which is the goal of our organization this semester. Senior design is similar to the capstone design course in the last academic year of undergraduate, which is also a requirement of graduation. All the programs of engineering have their own senior design. And the key to becoming senior design is to have an instructor to arrange the assignments and teaching contents systematically, which means that every new member will learn a lot of useful knowledge after one year if our team become senior design. However, it is difficult to find a professor in charge of these things. As firstly, the teacher should be interested in the project, meanwhile good organization ability is required. Then members can be divided according to programs to learn effectively.

After becoming the senior design, the biggest benefit to the club is that it will be more attractive to new teammates, and it will be easier to manage. Because when this becomes a class, there will be teachers to score each stage, and these scores will directly determine the final grade of your course, and this course is also one of the courses that must be completed before graduation.

Document signing and authorization:

In the United States, intellectual property is a very serious issue. If you want to use the school badge and school name for the competition, you must pass the authorization of the school trademark office. The RoboMaster Organizing Committee has a special document on the use of the school logo in the competition. Some schools do not allow student organizations to use the school name and badge. This requires the students to meet the professor for help or think of other solutions. For example, the name of the team is used instead of the school name, and the team logo is used instead of the school badge.

At that time, one clause in the contract provided by the RoboMaster Organizing Committee was called “The team is subject to Chinese laws and regulations”. Our school objected to this contractual clause, saying that as a US state university, we can only comply with federal law. After we talked with the legal department of the RoboMaster Organizing Committee, this clause was changed to "the team must abide by Chinese laws and regulations during the competition in China." The school also agreed to the terms and finally signed the contract smoothly.

Daily preparation experience and precautions:

Laboratory equipment

1. Involving high-voltage power projects requires the authorization of the relevant institutions of the school, students need to learn and pass the test to obtain the right to use. For example, the meaning of various types of hazard warning signs, the proper use of various equipment hazards/safety facilities (such as fire extinguishers), simple first aid measures, laboratory rules and regulations. A variety of equipment can be used after completing the test.

2. The laboratory advocates Sharing space. Different items have their own shelves or cabinets. You can use all the work stations freely when you work, but after using them, you need to clean the workbench and take back your own materials on the shelves or cabinets. Such a laboratory can accommodate more projects. RoboMaster is a machine-driven robot competition, and the various machining equipment in the laboratory is essential. In the United States, installing different equipment in the laboratory requires inspection by different safety agencies before they can be used. When we first arrived at AMP Lab, it was only an electronic engineering lab, so the entire lab only had a one-handed saw. And we have many aluminium square tubes that need to be processed, so our team has purchased a batch of machined equipment, including table saws, bench drills, wire saws, etc. It should be noted that the equipment cannot be used directly. If someone is injured during use, both the purchaser and the professor are liable and fine. The correct steps to add a piece of equipment are:

Need to be agreed by the chief professor of the lab.
Following the instruction manual finishing the assembly. It requires making sure does the equipment attaching the ground, does it need to be screwed on the ground, or does it require a special power supply? Also, if you have multiple electric processing equipment, they also have the exact spacing requirement. You can find detailed information in the instruction manual.
After finishing the assembly, these pieces of equipment need to be checked by school or local safety regulation institution in order to prevent the potential safety risk. Meanwhile, the team needs have at least one student passed the related safety training, and only the students passed these training are allowed to use the specified types of equipment or supervising others to use these types of equipment based on the local law.

Materials procurement experience:

The materials using in robotics are very expensive in American, a single screw cost more than 20 US dollars is totally possible to happen.

At the beginning of making the design and building the prototype, we are trying to use more recyclable or reusable materials. For instance, the PVC board and laser engraving machine are very convenient for the early age design, they can quickly make a 2D component, or even able to build some simple 3D component. Furthermore, aluminium extrusion is pretty useful for the framework building, especially when we are not sure about the final dimension, it can be easily adjusted the angle and location by using T-Nut and angular aluminium.

在美国，木质材料真的很便宜。The Home Depot、Lowes等材料店都在我们学校附近，我们买了很多木材来建造资源岛、哨兵跑道等比赛场地。此外，这些归档的搭建任务也有利于我们新队员练习团队合作和学习比赛规则。那么现在我就来介绍一下我们常用的一些物资采购网站以及它们的优点。

1.麦克马斯特卡尔 https://www.mcmaster.com

用于购买螺丝/轴/万能连接器/铰链等零件，价格不是很便宜，但是型号一般都很齐全，并且提供相应的CAD图纸。但需要注意单位的区别，比如螺钉分为公制和英制螺钉。

2.ZYLtech http://www.zyltech.com _

这个网站的铝材和角连接器的价格几乎是全网最低的，而且从德克萨斯州使用快递免费送货，这意味着交货速度会非常快。相比之下，上面提到的麦克马斯特也提供铝材质，但运费会很贵。eBay上也有一些商家，但都是从中国发货，需要很长时间才能收到。

并不是所有必要的材料都能在网上找到，我们总是需要大量的机加工零件。我们建议所有零件都从中国加工并邮寄到美国。那么时间更短，只收取美国六分之一的处理费，顺丰快递是国际包裹递送服务的最佳选择。

由于我们的团队是由学校全额资助的，所以我们在寻找赞助方面并没有太多的经验。总的来说，以上内容是我们两年来团队建设的经验，希望对大家有所帮助。