Orienting Boxes

[COOPERcable]

This is a very important issue, and I was wondering if any teams had dealt with it. My team (1084) has a simple "poker" that tips the box to the proper orientaton for our stacker. Has anyone else thought up some genius way to manipulate the boxes?

[Solace]

Originally posted by COOPERcable
This is a very important issue, and I was wondering if any teams had dealt with it. My team (1084) has a simple "poker" that tips the box to the proper orientaton for our stacker. Has anyone else thought up some genius way to manipulate the boxes?

both teams 571 and 281 have arms that squeeze the boxes into proper alignment for their pickup mechanisms

281
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18395

571
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18334

[COOPERcable]

I meant "has anyone created a component that can flip the boxes over so they are top up?"

[Keith Chester]

1089.

[Yan Wang]

639

Basically, if you're a stacker, there's no chance that you'll be successful if you cannot orient bins. Watching the UTC scrimmage matches (ouch, that flip hurt), maybe 4-5 bins were right side up. The majority were upside down or on its side.

[COOPERcable]

Right... well does anyone have pics or a description of how they did this?

[Yan Wang]

Well, yes, we do of course. But no, we will not be posting them anytime before our first regional.

[Wayne C.]

re 1089's Quicksilver machine

1089 has no hand to pick up boxes. They hook them under the lip of the box or the handles. Look at the gallery pix to see what I mean

The mechanism is so simple it is obvious but it requires that the boxes be flipped upright.

SOooo- if you look at their mechanism the hooks are on top of a pneumatic arm. As the arm swings up the face of the mechanism is held vertical .

However that means the boxes, with their overhanging lids and shape, hook on at a tilted angle.

To rectify that underneath the arm is an extension covered with rubber foam. As the arm swings up the extension swings out progressively more and the boxes are kept vertical.

To upright boxes the raised arm is lowered on top of the misoriented box. The rubber extension surface adheres to the plastic with a slight friction and with a short pull back by the robot the box flips up. The way it is all oriented the box is about 3 inches in front of and perfectly lined up with the hooking mechanism and that means an easy connection there.

They also have a finger to flip boxes and guide the driver into optimal hooking position. The can flip boxes efficiently from any position. The can hook from all 4 sides of the bins.

This thing works VERY well and I have watched them stack up to six boxes that way. They do 3-4 easily. The higher stacks are a bit unstable when lowered. They ALWAYs are able to flip the box on the first or second try.

BTW- the idea came at a time when they were about 10 lbs overweight and looking to build a grasping arm. One of the students was playing with the incomplete base and accidentally hooked the box on the plastic connector of the incomplete hand. The rest was crazy brainstorming, pizza in hand and snow coming down. It saved a good 6 lbs.


BTW2- Team 25's robot can also upright boxes with our wings but in no way as efficiently.

Too bad 1089 will only be going to Rutgers because this device is a really neat thing to see in action.

WC
team 25

[soezgg]

$$$ Orienting is EZ $$$


We will post pics soon.

[activemx]

we have two pokerts in front at different levels. Works very well!

[Yan Wang]

1:45 is such a short time... I expect the most anyone will orient efficiently is around 3 bins and stack is about 5-6 (not including taking a human stack). Of course, if you have two teams allied together who are both stackers, the orientor team will be very good at allowing the other team to stack. The UTC scrimmage videos showed very very few bins landing right side up so the human stacks will be a big part of the game. Stealing stacks is also important :)

[Pierson]

Team 360 has a box orienter that rotates with a window motor, opens and closes with pneumatics and can also stack 2 boxes high.

[FAKrogoth]

You too, eh?

Unfortunately, due to weight requirements, we will not be able to both rotate and stack at the same time (unless some cool form of magic happens).

I thought aluminum was supposed to be light . . .

[etoleb]

Although we can use our arms to flip bins to the "proper" orientation fairly quickly, we usually stack the bins when they're upside-down or sideways. Its just faster this way, at least for us.

As for our method, well, we usually just "tip" boxes over that are sideways.

Greg

[Spikey]

Our robot can grab a box in any orientation. The grabber is wide enough to accomadate any position.
Check Team 293's Spike in the pic forums!

[Curt Henderson]

Our team developed a mechanism that allows the boxes to be quickly inverted (lid down to lid up) into the correct orientation for our robot. It is simple, yet very efficient and in the end we probably won't even use it due to the many abilities our robot has.

[Wetzel]

Originally posted by monsieurcoffee
Basically, if you're a stacker, there's no chance that you'll be successful if you cannot orient bins. Watching the UTC scrimmage matches (ouch, that flip hurt), maybe 4-5 bins were right side up. The majority were upside down or on its side.

Try thinking outside the bin.
I know of at least one upsidedown bin stacker.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nothing is impossible, if you can figure it out.

[EvilInside]

Who doesn't stack upside down? Our grabbers were (by miracle, not design) perfectly designed to be able to pick up, re-orient to lid down position, and stack. We can also pick up a stack without tipping it just with a little different box placement. We got lucky, unfortunately our mentors were more interested in getting sleep than letting us practice driving (we finished at 10 pm the night before ship and they wouldn't let us stay to practice. One mentor said the one thing he was proud of was that we were never working past 10 pm. . . . . grrrrr. . . . ) So we don't know how effcient we will be at this.

[COOPERcable]

Our team started out designing a top-down lifter and orienter, but we opted to stick to the top-up design as it was easier for us to build a bot to do this. Top down would be sweet though, as it is easier to orient the boxes this way (they are top-heavy).

[iBob]

We have a pneumatic "arm" it comes down on the boxes, we can manipulate them to be rightside up in most cases. Sometimes we have trouble if its all the way upside down. http://scnc.jefferson.k12.mi.us/jhs/robotics/images/robots/robot2003.jpg Its the "arm" extension on back of the bot, its comes down and we drive forward a bit and the boxes magically turn the rightside up. works very well. Sorry i don't have a better picture right now... i'll try to find one.

[Gadget470]

Nobody has posted a response to the original question.

Has anyone developed a method to flip boxes from Lid Down to Lid Up?

[jmort03]

we have a design that can flip the bins from lid down to lid up, as well as any other direction needed.we can grab the bins in any positions.we can also stack very high, can limbo, all wheel drive( nice pushing force and rather fast), and can push stacks from the top of the ramp....:D i would post pics here but u will have to go to twistedblizzard.com to see them...also there will be video soon

[Yan Wang]

Originally posted by Gadget470
Nobody has posted a response to the original question.

Has anyone developed a method to flip boxes from Lid Down to Lid Up?

Our team has not come to a consensus about posting pictures yet. But our favorite and easiest way of orienting is upside down to rightside up. The biggest hind I can give you is to think rotations... times two.

[COOPERcable]

By flip I meant flip/rotate/grab/hit/drive into/throw... any means of getting the boxes in the proper orientation.

[galewind]

If you take a look at our robot, it's got a VERY simple mechanism for getting SIDEWAYS boxes rightside-up. It's slightly more work to do from the upside-down position, and our stacker is not designed for lifting upside-down boxes, so we're intending on targetting only those that are sideways, unless there are too many upside-down.

We had to scrap our original design due to the weight of our other components, so this was our best choice of re-design of our stacking module.

But then again, that's only if we're choosing to stack :D

I'm so pleased to see so many stacker robots under 14" tall. I'm really looking forward to our first regional, to see how many different designs were implemented to perform the same tasks that we do. This will help us in designing in future years. If you see someone with a silver #1089 jersey peering into your pit, please don't beat them with a stick... we're just trying to see how it all works :)

[jrgrim12]

We started out thinking of a graber design but dropped it. We did have a way to flip the boxes either right side up or upside down. It was very simple. We took to pads and placed them on bearings and found a spot on the box that you had to hit. Using stops and a set hieght. Once you lifted it would used gravity to flip the boxes to whatever side you wanted to stack them. We dropped that design because we wanted to throw the boxes. We can use our thrower to stack and orient the boxes to lid side up. It is a very simple design. We have two Forks that we use to hit the boxes and flip them or we slip under on side of boxes that are on their sides and lift and they flip up right. We can stack up to 5 high. I hope we post pictures but if you want to see it go here. http://www.archergeeks1022.org/imagelibrary/default.asp

and click on heavy weight