1710s Robot

[Jpatterson1710]

Meet our practice bot, QuikStack. Still needs a competed mechanism for the bins, but here's a video of one of our first cycles this year. Stay tuned for the completed QuikStack, and the competition bot, Decas.
http://youtu.be/b-eKpxStnas

[JorgeReyes]

We have a very similar robot. Did you guys power the front omni wheels and also your tote lifter looks like it barely clears totes so is there a seperate bin lifter?

[asid61]

Looks pretty slick. You could increase your intake and elevator speed if you have weight left to add motors or just decrease the gear ratio.
Your driver looks pretty good too. Good luck!

[samfruth]

We have a very similar robot. Did you guys power the front omni wheels and also your tote lifter looks like it barely clears totes so is there a seperate bin lifter?

The front omnis aren't powered and we are working on a way to pick up bins at the moment. We are trying to make it all one mechanism, idealy.

[samfruth]

Looks pretty slick. You could increase your intake and elevator speed if you have weight left to add motors or just decrease the gear ratio.
Your driver looks pretty good too. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice! We have the motors turned down in code as well. If i recall correctly half speed.
Sorry for double posting, phone struggles.

[asid61]

The front omnis aren't powered and we are working on a way to pick up bins at the moment. We are trying to make it all one mechanism, idealy.

If you want to make a can grabber into it, try putting a 1/3 circle cutout on each of your tote grabber arms. If the material is thin enough it should be able to spring enough to allow for both totes and cans, however, your vertical travel is limited enough that I don't know if you can grab onto the can properly.

[Woolly]

Thanks for the advice! We have the motors turned down in code as well. If i recall correctly half speed.
Sorry for double posting, phone struggles.

I know why you would want to turn that down to half speed for control but that still might be difficult for the driver in the heat of the moment. I'd seriously recomended some kind of string potentiometer or encoder being added so that the forklift can be mostly autonomous. For what you're doing, with a state machine and PID control you could get it down to "Press X to pick up a tote".

[Jpatterson1710]

There is definitely some improvement that could be done here, thats what is great about being this far along by the end of week 4. Thanks for all the advice, stay tuned for updates!

[ToddF]

Very nice. I like the low CG design.

[samfruth]

I have to agree; that driver seems pretty good.

[Jpatterson1710]

I like the low CG design.

Thanks! That was a major part of our decision making process. At this point we have about 50lbs of weigh left we can add. We'll be doing a much more in-depth analysis of our weigh distribution so we can see if/where we will add weigh.

[Jpatterson1710]

I have to agree; that driver seems pretty good.

Might be tootin' your own horn there a little, huh?

[221Sarahborg]

The low CG and leftover weight is definitely a cool feature next to the simplicity of the method for sure. The intake looks to work really well, too.

[DampRobot]

This is a really cool design. Although I've been much less invested in FRC than I have in the past, this design works a lot better and is a lot more simple than anything I came up with after kickoff.

Good work! Now, you just need to test, test, test, iterate, and drive the wheels off the thing.

[cmrnpizzo14]

I had a design I was working on earlier this year that was very similar to this. Two of the main problems I was trying to work through were how to pick up Recycling Bins and how to stack on the step for coopertition.

I read that you were trying to come up with something for the bins (best of luck) but I couldn't tell from the video if you could place totes on the step for coopertition. Did you have a solution for this?

[Jpatterson1710]

I couldn't tell from the video if you could place totes on the step for coopertition. Did you have a solution for this?

I'm not prepared to comment on that.... ;)

[bEdhEd]

Can't go wrong with Glitch Mob in your demo playlist!