pic: Team 1114 Gearboxes

[CD47-Bot]

[cdm-description=photo]16951[/cdm-description]

[Karthik]

Here they are in all their glory. These gearboxes were inspired by a lot of great teams in the past. They're definitely the most complex ones I've worked on in my seven years of involvment with FIRST.

Let us know what you think.

[Matt Adams]

Let us know what you think.
One word: Slick!

Matt

[matchpoint04]

Are those things omnidirve? And what motors are you using? I only see Globes.

[Joel Glidden]

They have the drill motors inside the lower section. You can see the back of the drill motor through the holes in the gearbox. I think I see FP motors in there as well. /powah

[JoeXIII'007]

Those are just beautiful. :-)

[Greg Perkins]

sexy kinda, although i wouldnt go out w/ it...does that sound bad? lol NICE JOB!

[Salik Syed]

Looks like a swerve drive to me...the globes are probably only for turning

one question....why not have seperate gear boxes and run Bevel gears to the wheels? this way you can have shifting swerve steer.... i was thinking about that a while ago but we decided not to use swerve this year.

I must say tho.....this is one of the slickest swerve gearboxes i've seen...ditto on the slick part

[Adams High Man]

ok, where do i put the coin in and where does the coffee come out???

[Rob Colatutto]

Very nice. I must ask though, what is that pneumatics for on the left module?

[Collin Fultz]

Very nice. I must ask though, what is that pneumatics for on the left module?

i could be wrong, but i think they nu-matic was just sitting on the table when they took the picture. it doesn't look like it's attached to anything.

[ShadowKnight]

very nice...we might try doing swerve drive next year...check out the sexy robot :P

[Karthik]

Thanks for all the wonderful comments.

To confirm you suspicions, yes we do have the "nerve to swerve" this year. Our gearboxes are powered by the Fisher Price and Drill motors, with Globe handling the steering.

Shifting Swerve Drive? The idea was talked about, but in the end we felt we wouldn't have the weight for it. Our gearbox mastermind, Ian Mackenzie may want to elaborate on this.

In regards to the pneumatic cylinder on the table, you are correct in that it was just lying on the table at the time of the picture. But, that is not to say we aren't using pneumatics on our drive system... You'll have to wait until the next teaser to see those.

Or, you could look very carefully at the following video clips. This is footage of our robot driving for the first time.

http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~imackenz/mobility1114.avi
http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~imackenz/mobility1114-2.avi

[JVN]

Thanks for all the wonderful comments.

Karthik,
Looks awesome.
Can't wait to see it in Long Island!

John

[Joe Johnson]

Very clever and compact gearbox & swerve design.

Nicely done.

Joe J.

P.S. I have just watched the videos. Looks even better. One think I know from experience is that the control software and the operator interface are key parts of getting the most out of machines with the nerve to swerve. I know these were just baby pictures, but it seems to me that you have a lot of work to do in both areas.

This is not a criticism, but just a heads up while there is still time to improve -- we were one of the early adopters of swerve and I have spent 10 all nighters (at least) trying to get the robot to behave.

One consequence of not getting it right is that the drivers tend to get into the "blame the machine" mode where whenever the robot is not working, it is the software's fault -- sometimes this is actually the case, but a lot of the time it was operator error and the operator did not get better because they did not look to themselves as the source of the problem. Think about it.

Finally, please don't take this as a criticism. I like your design quite a lot. You have chosen a difficult path -- I solute you. JJ

[Ian Mackenzie]

Thanks for the suggestions - the drive should be a lot smoother in a couple of days. There are a few code improvements that we were planning to make anyways, and we will be gearing up the potentiometers to get higher accuracy at the expense of reducing the number of revolutions the gearboxes can make (currently, we are using 10-turn potentiometers 1:1, which means an accuracy of about 3 degrees or so - we are going to change that to 2:1).

For the operator controls, the plan is to have the joystick control the translational velocity and a separate knob control the angular velocity of the robot - not only does this seem to have the simplest and most direct coding implementation, it makes sense because our driver is used to driving RC cars with the steering on a separate knob. So moving the joystick will simply move the robot without changing its orientation; turning the knob will spin the robot in place; straight ahead on the joystick and a turn of the knob will give tank-steering-like motion; sideways on the joystick and a turn of the knob will result in a "circle strafe", circling around an object while always pointing towards it.

We toyed with the idea of attempting a shifter, but that seemed a bit too ambitious - although next year, who knows?

[Holtzman]

Very clever and compact gearbox & swerve design.

Nicely done.

Joe J.

P.S. I have just watched the videos. Looks even better. One think I know from experience is that the control software and the operator interface are key parts of getting the most out of machines with the nerve to swerve. I know these were just baby pictures, but it seems to me that you have a lot of work to do in both areas.

This is not a criticism, but just a heads up while there is still time to improve -- we were one of the early adopters of swerve and I have spent 10 all nighters (at least) trying to get the robot to behave.

One consequence of not getting it right is that the drivers tend to get into the "blame the machine" mode where whenever the robot is not working, it is the software's fault -- sometimes this is actually the case, but a lot of the time it was operator error and the operator did not get better because they did not look to themselves as the source of the problem. Think about it.

Finally, please don't take this as a criticism. I like your design quite a lot. You have chosen a difficult path -- I solute you. JJ





Thanks Joe

That means alot coming from you. With the help of Ian and Karthik, 1114 has come along way from the rookie 7 stack builder it was last year. I look forward to seeing you in Atlanta. Watch out for the canadians this year. We've already seen 188's nice new 6 motor shifting system, and 781's beautiful cnc work . Canadian regional should be very interesting


Tyler Holtzman