Orange County Totebot Race Competition

[seg9585]

Hey CD --

Just wanted to announce that this Saturday 11/14, four OCRA (Orange County Robotics Alliance) teams will be competing in this Fall's Totebot Race Competition as part of the OCRA Fall Workshops event. Team 4276, 4619, 4141, and 3309 have been building their own Totebots as a fall drive system build training project.

The teams will be racing auto-cross and time-trial style on a specially designed race course at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, CA. The totebots were designed to very specific rules as described in the Totebot Competition Rules Manual (see attached) and will be racing on a course according to described parameters (see attached CAD screenshot of the course).

We will be filming the race using a student designed and built (3d printed) quadcopter drone. I'll post the results and some footage from the event afterwards.

As a sneak preview, here is some totebot drive testing from two of the teams:
Team 4276 (https://youtu.be/ge-Amu8Qwyc)
Team 3309 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7cf2JOehw)

All in the area are free to come watch the races (1pm-3:30pm) and local teams are welcome to participate in the morning Workshop sessions.

[DaveL]

Looks like a bunch of fun!
Can't wait to see pictures/video showing the drive mechanism.

How are the current competitors steering?
From the video, it looks like car steering.
Dave

[SenorZ]

Team 4276 made a steering rack. It is powered by a pg188 gearmotor, and controlled using a steering wheel joystick.

Team 3309 is using tank drive.

[seg9585]

Looks like a bunch of fun!
Can't wait to see pictures/video showing the drive mechanism.

How are the current competitors steering?
From the video, it looks like car steering.
Dave

4276 designed a linkage steering mechanism which produces a +/-30 degree rotation to the front pneumatic wheels (powered by a PG188 gearmotor and PID controlled with an encoder). The rotation is mapped to an actual USB steering wheel the students use to drive, and acceleration/brake pedals to control drive acceleration from the rear pneumatic wheels.
I will get some photos to share tomorrow, I just realized I hadn't taken any good ones of the linkage and robot internals yet.
We also have an FPV system onboard with a wide angle lens to see live robocam views and to record the same view.

[aciarniello]

As an autocrosser and robotics coach, I'm so upset that I didn't come up with this idea. This is the best thing ever.

I impatiently await video of this awesome event!

[GreyingJay]

Wait wait wait. Totebot racing AND a student built drone??

I'm moving to Orange County!!

[RacerX]

Great idea!!!

Really like the test video's under the cloak of darkness..... ;)

Please post videos of the races.

[BBray_T1296]

4276 designed a linkage steering mechanism which produces a +/-30 degree rotation to the front pneumatic wheels (powered by a PG188 gearmotor and PID controlled with an encoder).
Snip

Does the linkage use Ackermann geometry or simple parallelogram?

[SenorZ]

Simple parllelogram

[Pauline Tasci]

Can't wait to see some video of today's races

[seg9585]

Does the linkage use Ackermann geometry or simple parallelogram?

Added some photos of the linkage as completed.

[seg9585]

More photos and videos coming, but here are a few sneak peaks from the races.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW4Fyxk9N00&feature=youtu.be

https://youtu.be/duEJIqIPDXo

[GreyingJay]

This looks amazing.

This is using standard FRC control systems - D-Link radio and driver station software? How did you find the WiFi range for controlling a far away robot?

[seg9585]

This looks amazing.

This is using standard FRC control systems - D-Link radio and driver station software? How did you find the WiFi range for controlling a far away robot?

Teams were using both the 2015 and 2014 versions of FRC control system hardware (either cRio or roboRio, connected to the D-Link radios from their respective years). We limited the track's size to ensure the totebots were never more than 100 feet from the driver station laptops, which was within the router's capabilities.
I will note that we attempted to run all 4 totebots at once and had severe interference issues. Rather than spending more time to troubleshoot, we decided to run 2 totebots at once at a maximum (during practice we ran 3 or 4 at once without issue but were concerned about connectivity for the official races).

[dcarr]

Check out this recap video of the Totebot Races: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvI9lwOEiz8

[SenorZ]

Thanks for the recap video, David. That aerial footage looks great.

[sciencenuetzel]

That aerial footage looks great.
+1

This looks like a fun event.