Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Wildstang gets a lot of visitors in the pits at competitions, looking at our robot, seeing what we did, asking how we did things. This is great, but only for those at the same competitions!

This year, instead of trying to put some information down in words and pictures, I wanted to try something different and put together a series of videos detailing the design of different parts of the robot. So we gladly introduce our design videos: After The Game.

I managed to grab a couple of juniors and seniors who were heavily involved in the robot design and build (and who hadn't run away on summer vacation or off to college!), and talked through our robot design - what we did, how we did it, and what changed over the course of the season. But wait, there's more! Since this was all shot after the season (and our post season), I asked them to reflect on the season: what they thought worked and what didn't, and what they would do differently next time.

Hopefully the video format gives some more information than we could get across in text and pictures alone. The aim was to give a good closeup look at our robot design (just like talking to us in the pits), but also benefit from our thoughts once the season was over.

As we all prepare for next season, I hope this provides some inspiration to other teams to look closely and reflect on what they did this year and make lots of notes, so we can all hit the ground running for the 2013 season.

(Any feedback on the video format welcome, so we can make that better too.)

The Youtube playlist is here:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...ature=view_all

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Well I know I've done that before. Thank you for posting these videos! They look like they were a lot of work but they will be so helpful and interesting. I'm going run through the whole playlist...

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

I forgot to mention.. There will be 1 or two more coming on electrical things. One topic in particular we get asked about a lot: our LEDs. :)

However, right now I'm not sure when these will get done. I will definitely post when they are up.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

These are fantastic, I just watched all 6. I love that you talk about all the problems and how you solved it. So many times it seems like the power house teams just know how to do it right because we don't see all the iterations that happen in the background.

Thank you for putting this together, excellent job.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Fantastic videos! 25 minutes well spent.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Very nicely done! Sharing your design insights/process helps all of us become better.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thanks for posting this. I really love in the chassis section the slow motion turning hop. This is a great way to document the pros/cons of descisions made during the season.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Very nice videos.

I really liked how you talked a lot about the failures of the initial designs, and your solutions to all of them. It really shows that you have to continually redesign and fix the weak points of any robot to stay on top in FRC.

(It's interesting that you removed automatic tracking later in the season. We did that too).

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Us three. I suspect this was fairly common. Early game analysis resulted in a desire to be able to shoot from anywhere on the field. However, after playing the game it became clear that in most cases, shooting from a few specific locations like the corners of the key and the fender is a more foolproof approach, and it does not necessarily require automatic tracking.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

This was truly inspiring and educational. It really makes you realize that even the "powerhouse" amazing teams arent perfect. They change many things, and are never done, after the 6 weeks. This really taught me that you shouldn't be afraid to completely change a design in the robot, at any moment.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

I forwarded this to the 2815 email list and told them to watch it all. Fantastic work--once again, Wildstang gives us a video we're going to have to work hard to top.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Excellent videos! Very informative, even for those of us who have competed with your team. I wish more teams would do these sort of breakdowns of their robot, as it's always very interesting to see the different solutions groups (especially successful ones) come up with to the same problem. For example, I had never heard of that particular method of tensioning. We may have to prototype it after this coming season!

I just have a small question about those drive modules-- how do you assemble everything within them? Like, do you put all the chains and stuff together and then put it into the frame and the stick the axles through (excuse my rough description)? Or is there some other method that you use?

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

This link is getting sent to my mentors and build team right away. Thanks for the insights!

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thank you so much for making these! I'm in awe of the though that goes into each component of the design and how elegantly each is implemented. You make me want to make my team better and make it to champs this year.

I urge the community to see powerhouse teams not as teams to hate against for being so good but to look on to as examples of incredible dedication and elegant engineering.

As a few said before, it really is incredible to see how drastically your design changed - especially before champs! Wow!

Totally taking notes on these videos....::rtm::

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

These videos are FANTASTIC. It is great that you guys decided to put them together, and even better than you decided to share with the community.

Who is the gentleman doing most of the talking in these clips? I don't think I've met him before.

-John

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thanks to Wildstang for posting these videos! It is great to see teams accepting the challenges put on by JVN and others. The FIRST community will only benefit from learning about how you came up with your designs, what worked, did not work, and would be changed for the future. I will definitely share these videos with my team. Thanks for sharing these wonderful resources!

- Matt

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Excellent job with the editing Steve! First time I've actually seen most of these since filming.

We had to assemble each bearing block around the main extrusion. When all of the mounting hardware is removed, the bearings are actually the only thing holding the carriages onto the extrusions. Then we put in everything else (axles/sprockets, gearbox output shaft), and then put the chain on. Gearbox was last. This is probably not the most efficient way to do it. These were inspired by our 2011 modules, but those were much easier to assemble because those bearing slots in the extrusion were cut out all the way to the ends so we could pre-assemble each bearing block. We changed that on the 2012 iteration to give the frame a bit more of a solid mounting point as the modules were part of the frame this year.

That would be me.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

Let me try address all the questions/comments in the posts...

As with anything, there is a lot to be said for experience in knowing where to start, but there is also a lot (possibly more) to be said for the experience in being able to iterate quickly, identify problems, and be confident with change.

The high-speed (from a point & shoot) helped out a number of times through the season. Even though the design was done at that point, it allowed us to react to the issues we were seeing ahead of time, rather than see what happened on the field if we left it as it.

We took continuous improvement to the extreme this year :)

Continuing from the last point.. No, don't be afraid, but make sure it is a very carefully considered change, and one within your means/abilities. If you've spent 6 weeks designing and building your robot, make sure that change is the right change to make!

Champs alone would be a whole extra video :ahh: ...

While I wasn't thinking of the challenge when doing this, I would love to see more teams do this in the future. Any team! Apart from thinking back on the season, these aren't much more than what you'd get if you talked to us in the pits. But, it's now available to everyone. I didn't really get to see anyone in the pits this year, and would love to see in detail what some other teams did.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thank you for spending the time to put together these videos. I love seeing the details in the design of successful robots.
I thought the lexan mounts on your first intake roller were brilliant. Allowing it to flex on impact makes a lot more sense than trying to make it strong enough not to break.
The drive modules are pretty cool too. The wrap around bearing mounts look like a good way to accomplish adjustable center distance chain tensioning. Were they made out of C channel or a piece of rectangular extrusion? What are the advantages of enclosing the chains? We built a belt drive in the off season with belts inside a square tube, and it made things pretty challenging to assemble and repair.
The drop down landing gear seemed like a great way to get over the barrier. Between the landing gear and the wedge you built for championships, which one do you think was more effective?

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Hi Steve,

Thanks for posting these. I took a look at the #6 video (shooter), and several questions came to mind, if you'd be willing to share some more detail:

- with the 7:1 speed reduction and the 550's free speed of 19300 rpm, the top speed of your wheel would be somewhere around 2700 rpm (neglecting gear losses). What was your operating speed for shooting?

- what kind of speed control algorithm did you use? e.g. PID, bang-bang, voltage compensated open-loop, etc

- how long was your spin-up time from 0 rpm to operating speed?

- did you keep your wheel spinning continuously during the entire match, or did you spin it up when ready to shoot?

- what were your two launch angles?

- did you measure your actual launch speed?

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Let me try answer some of these..

Let me check if we did an accurate measurement or not.

If I remember right, for the first shooter it was a manual adjustment through a potentiometer on the OI to adjust speed/voltage directly. In testing we found our happy place for values and would adjust to those. This also let us vary it slightly if we needed to. For the new flywheel we used bang-bang.

Spin-up time was roughly 2 seconds.

Let me check on that with our operator tonight. From memory we would spin it up as we were approaching the goals. But, let me double check.

We did not measure them, but I would put them at around 60 and 75-80 degrees. I can do a rough check of this tonight when I am at the workshop.

No.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Thank you for making and sharing these videos they are excellent!

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Just posted this link in my team's Facebook group, thank you for making them.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Hi Steve,

Not to bug you but if you found any more info I'm still interested. Thanks.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Awesome.

Wildstang is still my favorite team...even after the curtain has been pulled back to reveal that they are not super-human, infallible engineers.

Just really close to it. :D

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

What camera did you use for the high speed footage of both the chassis and the shooter? We have been looking for an affordable camera that shoots around 1000 FPS, and your shooter section 3:18 of video 6 seems to be at about that rate.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Beautiful videos.

Your unique roller powered by the shooter wheels made me kick myself.

We struggled all year with the differences between new and old balls, because the new ones had much higher friction and would grab our shooter wheels, transferring more momentum and flying much further.

Some teams (bees) structured their tower to have more ball 'wrap'. Low-robots had more wrap by definition: 67 had nearly 180 degrees. We had..... 50 degrees.

Your bottom roller addressed that beautifully (and perhaps without even realizing it?) by giving the ball additional distance to speed up to the shooter's speed.

I learn more in FIRST that I do my day job.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

We used a Canon point-and-shoot that does 240 FPS. I believe is was one of the ELPH HS series.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Hey great video series guys. It was really informative and well done :)

I do have one design question though. We struggled last year with a somewhat similar roller system, but we used rubber bands. They would constantly move left and right and get all messed up. What is poly cord and how do you keep them from floating all over the place?

Thanks :D

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Poly cord is sold on mcmaster by the name urethane belt. Some teams use the round belt and some use the flat belt. Basically, you buy the polycord and install by cutting the belting to length(a little short so that you get tension on your belts) and weld the two sides together with heat(we have a polycord welding set, but it's really not needed. I've heard of a flame or a soldering iron working well). Our team used the round belt for 2012. We machined pulleys out of ABS to make sure that the belt wouldn't move. Many other teams have similar or the same way of keeping it in place. I've also heard good things about flat belt from teams like 341. Apparently if you wrap your shafts in electrical tape where you want your belts to stay the belts will actually walk back to their places if they get moved.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

You can also get small metal pieces that are inserted into each end of the cord to hold it in a loop

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

That's for the hollow polycord. Most teams that I know of use the solid cord, and it's honestly not that hard to weld(even without a special belt welder). We actually used a soldering iron before we got our belt welder and the welds held up the whole season. The belt welder makes the welds a bit cleaner however.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Hollow is a touch easier to maintain, just since you don't have to re-weld each belt when you're tightening it and it's easier to install a barb in place than it is to re-weld a belt in place. I think I'm sold on flat belting from now on though.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

That's interesting. Electrical tape will stop them from walking? Defiantly will have to invest in some of those! Haha

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Great videos, thanks for sharing.

Video 4 would not play on my mobile (iPad), the rest played fine.

Re: Wildstang 2012: After The Game
 

Polycord doesn't require maintenance, and welding in place isn't that hard. Granted, our team has used polycord in excess.

We also want to switch to flat belt, but we have so much belt left over from 2009....