Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

With the new release of the VEXpro/WCP product line, we'd love to see teams utilize these new COTS items in their designs! We're excited to see the robots in 2014 use these parts, and more excited to see your designs before kickoff!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Update:

In addition to the $50 gift card, the student winner of this design competition will receive a very cool shirt, generously donated by the folks at VEX Robotics.

When we select a winner, we will ask for your size and address to get your prize out to you ASAP!

Hope that is enough incentive to continue on with this design competition. Make sure you do your very best!

Good luck!

-Akash

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Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

If a team of students win do they all get shirts?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Do we have to include bolts/velcro/rivets in our CAD models?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I'm really far behind on this competition, so I don't know if I'll get things done with how slow I am at Inventor, but I thought I'd post a picture from a few days ago and explain some of my thoughts on design for this game.



Essentially there's the important parts of the drivetrain and intake. The drivetrain uses a 3 CIM single speed through 5 inch wheels. Geared for about 9 FPS - the robot is rarely traveling more than half the length of the field. Internal belts handle power transmission. 1/16th drop - the math says a no-drop drive would have worked, but I wanted a little just to be safe.

The intake is affixed to the drivetrain and not any kind of elevation mechanism. (Why do you think this is? Will explain more at end of challenge). Two "flippers" feature 1" "marshmallow wheels" driven by BAG motors running through VersaPlanetary transmissions. These are pneumatically actuated to allow for pressure on the crates and the ability to release crates from its grip. I still need to figure out exactly how I'm mounting the pistons - right now they are concentric with holes on the chassis and flippers in order to get the motion figured out.

Ultimately I think one of the biggest challenges of the game is securely gripping the game piece. Dropping a 9 pound crate has serious consequences for any robot underneath it, and I don't think just any roller claw is able to lift a crate off the ground. I can't wait to see what others come up with.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

It's up to you. It's a design competition, so I don't believe our judges will be looking specifically for every single detail that isn't self-explanatory. If there's a hole in the tubing that matches the hole in a gusset, they will know a bolt/rivet goes there. Rule of thumb - if it matters to how the design works, put one in IF it isn't already obvious.


Also, Chris, great looking design so far!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I'm joining in this challenge really late, as in Today.

Is it OK for Two students to work on the same CAD?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

It's allowed.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Reminder: The Design Competition will end on the 31st of this month, which is in 3 days! You need to send your submission in to BlockBarrage2013@gmail.com before then in order to get it judged.

Your submission must include:
-Your CAD model assembly either as a STEP file or as a Solidworks Pack and Go zip file.
-A short written description of your robot, your strategy, and the engineering process behind your design.
-Your name (and names of those who helped you in the project, if applicable)
-Team affiliation (if applicable)
-Student or mentor

We already have a few submissions, and we're excited to see the rest of them!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Sorry, no. A single t-shirt will be awarded. I did not plan ahead for group submissions.

-Akash

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Part of the challenge is if a team wins when there's only one prize, they must employ teamwork and gracious professionalism and share it.

Or give it to their CAD mentor. ;)

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Any chance you could extend it to 12:01 AM on the 4th? :/

Oh well, I'll post a crayola drawing of what I would have finished if I had time. I didn't want to work super hard when I needed to catch up on sleep for Kickoff, I guess...

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I'm sure what you have now + crayola drawing will suffice in inspiring students.

While this is a fun competition, we do encourage everyone to catch up on sleep before the build season. This is just for practice. You need to be prepared for the real deal.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

For the write up, what is the definition of short?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

As my Literature teacher always says: "As long as you need to get the point across, and no longer than that".

Our judges don't want to be reading pages of paper, but they are interested in your design.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

When you say the CAD is due on the 31st, do you mean due by midnight on the 31st or due before the 31st, as in midnight on the 30th?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Midnight of the 31st/First thing in the morning January 1st. Though I suggest celebrating New Years with friends and family and not working on CAD.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Here is my final submission. Pretty surprised I "finished" as I've never worked on a full scale robot on my own, just assemblies here and there. If I had more time there was a long list of items I would have changed (mainly the inside of the arm, the claw, and the pivot). I had little to no foreknowledge of telescoping lifts going into this challenge so this would definitely use several more revisions before it hit production level but I'm happy with the results.

echin and I collaborated on the design/strategy portion and then each built separate robots (no shared CAD files). There are a lot of neat differences between the two but I'm excited for when we make one together next month!

Thanks to the organizers and everyone involved on this design challenge! This was a great pre-season activity and hope to see it again next year so we can integrate it with our fall activities for CAD training!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Brendan, awesome job with such a thorough design!

One comment that may be nit-picky, but thought it was worthy to mention because the principle can be applied in the future.

On your arm pivot, I foresee issues with holding tolerances in the last stage of your gear reduction. Currently, that Center-to-Center is dependent on tolerances in gearbox mounting to frame, top gusset mounting to frame, hole location in gusset, etc. Especially with what I assume will be significant loads in the arm pivot, you want to guarantee proper C-C to ensure longevity/avoid failure in that reduction.

My initial thought would be use the gearbox plates as the gusset on that side, so the 1/4 plate goes all the way to the vertex, and you ensure proper C-C.

Just a quick comment on tolerance stack up, but overall an awesome design! Best of luck this (real) build season!

-Mike

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Thanks for the feedback Mike!

I see your point and agree. I can now see with my current setup using chains instead of gears for the final stage would have been a better choice as it would have been more forgiving. Using the gears and "splitting" the gearbox up was not smart. :rolleyes: My original design used chain but it really needed to have a strong tensioning system built in and figured gears would be a better choice but I didn't look at how that would change the approach.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Question for Andrew: Although I wanted to fully participate in this thing, I never really got the chance to do a lot of CAD work. However, I did spend a lot of time thinking of a design, and I am currently working on a simple CAD model to demonstrate my thoughts about the challenge to the community. It is just a sketch of a design, rather than an actual model ready for production, but do you still think that it would be worthwhile to submit it? I'm going to make it either way, just so that I can show people my design, but I'm not sure if it would count towards judging.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Submit either way.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Here's a picture of my robot, and a STEP file of the entire thing.

Picture:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxr...it?usp=sharing

CAD:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxrM...lNYzRveHM/edit

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I'm not sure I can really count this as an entry, since I have no clue how to get Blender to give me a good .step file, so here are some pictures of my design, along with a link to the blend file.

I designed this robot to be built on the resources budget of my team, which is hand tools, very limited machining sponsorship, a ton of VEX parts, and the welding class three hallways down. In practice, it would lift one human-fed crate at a time up and deposit it onto the shelf. It features:

• Wide configuration Kitbot
• 4-CIM Drivetrain
• Three-tiered electronics board
• 80/20 - based elevator
• VEX rollers to deposit crate
• Andymark Wormbox powering the lift
• Machined container with sponsors' logos cut into the sides

The pictures are here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6psinnh4dvkfxqf/Rotated.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5vvruda923slek/Feeding.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mayt3fn18hnh6dt/Deposit.png

And the blend file:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5flfp92hs...kBarrage.blend

It has been a fun design season. I am excited to see what everyone else came up with!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Well, here is my design... concept (not much of a CAD, but whatever). Btw, some dimensions might change if I were to actually CAD the real thing for things like structural concerns.



Here is my description from the email:

This robot picks up crates off the floor by aligning the corner of the crate in the v in the front of the robot. It then picks the crate up using one of the spring loaded claws designed to grab the corners of the indents in the crate. There are 3 of these claws attached to a pulley driven by 2 cims. Because the claws are spring loaded, they will expand outwards to clear the create wherever you see the ramps on the side of the tower. This happens twice: once to pick up the crate and one to drop it into the hopper. The hopper is designed to start inside the frame perimeter, but then immediately be extended outwards by window motor driven linear actuators (not shown) to a position where it can dump into the 1 point goal, and stay in that position. It can hold 3 crates. When the robot is full, it will drive up to the 1 point goal and release all the crates in the hopper, as well as any in the claws, by opening the window motor driven gates.

The reasoning for this design is that there is a limited number of crates in the feeding station. Especially with Ri3D probably screaming at low-resource teams not to attempt a floor, and giving them efficient feeder-loaded scorers. On the other hand, there are going to be so many crates on the ground it will be hard to drive (a good drivetrain consideration if I made one). So for a top tier robot, which is what I decided to create, floor loading is going to be a necessity. I also decided that because of the high capacity, it would be more efficient, and possible easier, to hold multiple crates and dump into the 1-point goal than place 1 crate at a time into the 2 point goal. Also, I figured that many teams are going to have a lot of trouble lining up square with crates, so I line up with the corners.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I forgot to include my description/ game annalysis when I put my CAD up, so here it is. It is a bit long, but it's all bullet points.
Design features:
1. Funnels on each end of the robot to center crates
2. Pivoting telescoping arm
3. Claw attached to arm to pick up crates
4. Single speed swerve drive
5. Design abilities
6. Fits under overpass
7. Loads from the floor
8. Loads from the feed station
9. Places crates on the high shelf
10. Scores on the high shelf in auto
11. Loads from each side of the robot
12. Scores one crate at a time

Game Analysis
1. There are many more crates on the field than in the loading stations. A good team should be able to score all or almost all of the crates from the feeder station on the shelf if they can go under the overpass, and can score two crates per run. Because of this, relying solely on the feeder station is not a valid strategy since there are three teams on an alliance and even at one crate per run from each robot, the crates would run out.
2. The alliance crate is an extremely important game piece because a good team should be able to score around 100 points per match, so the alliance crate doubles that to 200.
3. The shelf scores twice as many points as the high tank, and if you can pick up off the floor, the necessary travel distance is the same for each.
4. A mechanism to put crates on the shelf is somewhat more complicated than a mechanism to dump in the tank.
5. Autonomous is much easier than it seems because the crates are scattered randomly around the field and if the robot goes straight across the field, it is likely to run into at least one crate, especially if it is going for the shelf. Using a funnel, it would be possible to collect at least one crate while going all the way across the field, and then pick it up and score it. It might be possible to score several crates in autonomous this way.

Swerve
1. Allows the robot to quickly maneuver to collect crates, and rotate to place the crates on the shelf while it is moving towards the shelf
2. Single speed
3. Dual plate design; one plate on top, one on the bottom plates made of steel to add counter weight
4. Quick disconnect wheel module; the wheel module comes off with one stop collar. The drive belt pulley and rotation sprocket stay in place when the caster is removed, allowing for fast and easy maintenance
5. Structural bumpers
6. Bumpers are made in two corners, and have a structural mount.
7. Mounting is done with a piece of 2x1 box tubing which is bolted to each plate
8. Mounts are made of steel to add counter weight

Also, thank you to all of the people who created this challenge. It kept me occupied for most of the month, and it was interesting to design an entire robot on my own whithout having much input from anyone else.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I don't recall seeing the winning designs for this challenge anwhere. Does anyone know what they were?

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

The winners were privately contacted as we wished to honor the privacy concerns that many submitters asked of us. The main thing is many submissions used new designs that these teams applied to their 2014 robots, and I'm not sure if everyone is ready to share yet. If they would like to, the winners may come forward publicly anytime and share their designs.

That being said, almost every submission we received was amazing and unique in their own way, and all would have been powerful contenders in the game Block Barrage, had it been played.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Thanks! I could see that, it was a great excuse to design new concepts, and there are a lot of similarities between our 2014 robot and my submission.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

So whats the likelihood of this occurring again this year? I wish I hadn't missed this last year.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Same! If there is some additional planning that needs to take place I'd love to help out with this!

I think it would be neat to kickstart this much sooner in the off-season so teams can use it for CAD practice or mock kickoff brainstorming. December is a little too late to make it a team activity.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I would love to see this come back next year if there's enough interest. Unfortunately I won't be able to run it like I did this year due to college starting, but if anyone else would like to take over the project, I'd love to hand it over to them and help out when I have time.

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

I would be more than glad to create a game animation if this continues!

Re: Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition
 

Bump (sorry) for similarities between this and Recycle Rush.