Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

In eliminations it has been tethered to 1547. Before the first final you could see a member of 1114 set up the ramp then lay out a cord of some sort along the back wall, then the 1547 drivers connected a cord /cable from their bot to the one 1114 ran. Not a bad strategy, assuming 1547 was under weight.

I posted in the regional thread as well, but the other alliance having a team disabled in the finals for not being brought on field in the transport configuration made me wonder how this strategy is legal. 1114 clearly carried the ramp on the field independent from any robot, and then connected it to the 1547 bot once on the field. Doesn't this violate the transport configuration rules?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

So was 1547 not moving on purpose? Was their only role to hold the ramp with some string?
Or is their lack of movement something else

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

According to the Webcast chat it was strategy, but I would wait to hear from the teams to be sure.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

2994 was disabled for extending into the landfill without a quick fix being possible (if they had moved back they would have been in auto zone).

We were instructed since Thursday to extend out of transportation configuration in queue as long as it was safe. That wasn't why they were disabled.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Can't say I like this provision, but Thanks for the info, I found it hard to believe it would have been an oversight by 1114.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

It seems to be coming a more and more common provision.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I addressed the concerns of our strategy in this thread here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...=135429&page=3

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I have watched a every 1114 match closely. I still cannot see exactly how the RC's stand up watch this!. I assume that it is a combination of the intake wheels, the conveyor lift and the central claw as a pivot point. Can someone explain how this works?

The other thing that amazes me about this robot is the way the RC is so stable in the center claw while 6 totes high and then simply slides out when scoring. See here. Are the black pads on the central claw active?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Theres a black thing that comes down when they go for RC's, which you can see here, which may have something to do with righting the can when they retract.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Oh, maybe they harvest the RCs into that black thing, which catches on the bottom of the container, forcing it to right itself as the intake runs. That's my best guess.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

From talking to them and seeing it in action, that is the case. It's apparently called "The Boot" :p .

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

We have added the CAD file of Simbot Sideswipe to our list of resources on our website.

HERE is a link to the CAD webpage.

We have also included a render of the robot, the engineering book, and the display board found at championships.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Yay!

EDIT:
The engineering notebook link appears to be broken.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Thank you, we're trying to fix this. Hopefully will work soon.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

It's working for me now. Thank you so much for releasing these. They're amazing resources, and I'll definitely be spending a lot of time looking through them.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

How did 1114 settle on its unusual intake geometry during prototyping?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I'm interested in this too. It kind of seems like all these great ideas were the first things you all thought to prototype which, if true, is really impressive.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

The intake prototype happened on the first Monday of build season. We'll get some video uploaded to YouTube this weekend so you can see how it all came together.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Here's the video of our initial intake prototype. You'll notice the rudimentary nature of the setup; it's built with cupboard doors, old intake wheels, hand drills, and two old four caster carts.

https://youtu.be/jH4n1X1Oz7c

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Wow, that was quick. You have great people working with you.

We are going to show this at our next team meeting as we prepare for the new challenge.
This is a great example of prototyping that will be relevant for the students who worked on last years game.

I can't thank you enough for the resources that Simbotics provides to help make our team better.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Is there any reason that you decided to use banebot wheels over the blue urethane wheels on the final robot?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

We used many different wheels while prototyping. With the Banebot wheels we were able to intake almost any tote, in any orientation. We even had it picking up a tote that was almost completely sideways (from what our normal orientation for totes was). The only downside was that the orange rubber would wear out pretty quickly. I believe we ended up changing them almost everyday during competition.

The blue wheels were not as effective, however they did not wear out as quickly. They were still pretty good though. We used the blue urethane wheels on our practice bot because they didn't wear out, and we wouldn't have to change them. It also made our driver try and drive with intakes that weren't as good as the competition ones, making him struggle a bit and make sure he lined up with the totes properly.

For our team we will use what ever the best option is, no matter what colour it is, or if it takes a little more work to maintain the robot.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Very cool. Were there other approaches to intaking before this prototype? Any chance of more videos being uploaded?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

In addition to the reasons that Aaron mentioned, the Banebot wheels were considerably lighter than the blue urethane wheels.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Any reason as to why the banebot wheels were able to pick them up better? Did they just have better traction, or was there too much compression on the urethane wheels? Was it some other factor?

EDIT: I've been informed it was most likely the difference in durometer.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

disclaimer: i'm not 1114, i just played with intakes for six weeks

The Banebot polyurethane rubber seems like a very different material than the blue McMaster wheels. The consistency is closer to that of a pencil eraser than of a smooth rubber like the blue McMaster wheels, and the BB wheels will start to fail before they break traction with a game piece. The McMaster wheels are more durable so they'll slip before they fail, and they also seem subjectively a bit less sticky.

Durometer isn't an absolute measure of traction by any means. You can get the McMaster wheels in a durometer lower than the orange Banebot wheels. So I would not take a durometer number as gospel in terms of tractive force applied to a game piece - especially if you are comparing two different rubbers.

Another variable this year is that the amount of compliance your intake had affected what wheels worked optimally. 1114's intake was mostly rigid with a small degree of compliance in the outermost wheels for picking up cans. More compliant intakes seemed to prefer the blue McMaster or even the harder blue BaneBot wheels over the orange BaneBots (I was really surprised to see that the harder BB wheel would grip a tote better...). Intake design this year was definitely not something you could afford to guess on without prototyping extensively.

For comparison we found our custom 30A durometer urethane wheels to have about the same or slightly better traction than orange banebot wheels. The BB wheels are aerated rubber not urethane.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I am also interested to hear the answer to these questions.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

No, this was the first approach that any real effort was put into. There were many subsequent prototypes with different wheel spacing, wheel sizes, wheel types, tension in the surgical tubing, etc.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

The big lesson that carries from this year to the next is that there must be an active intake, and if the game piece doesn't conform to it then the intake must conform to the game piece. Having that design paradigm on day 1 would have set us up a bit better this year. I'm really impressed you guys had such a successful prototype on Day 3.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

If you don't mine me asking, how did you come to the conclusion that this would be the best intake to test, when you hadn't even made any previous prototypes? What was the thought process that lead to this unconventional intake geometry being your first attempt? Did you lay out the performance goals for the intake before hand? If so, what were they?

I am sorry if these questions come off to pushy. I'm just really interested in how you came to such an effective prototype so early.

Thanks again for all the information and resources that have been posted already.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

The thing was, this intake wasn't unconventional to a lot of us. We were expecting a lot more teams with this exact same style of intake in the season. I was surprised to see a lot less teams(or none) come up with this design (until later in the season).

The goals for the intake were:
- Fast at puling in a tote
- reorientate almost any tote, no matter what position it is in (besides up side down totes)
- Hold the tote inside our robot long enough for the indexer to pick up the tote
- Intake Cans, and upright cans

To accomplish these goals we thought that the intakes must somehow be able to pull the totes in towards us to orientate them, the wheels alone will probably not do this (We proved this later by removing the front wheels on this prototype). To pull the tote in you would need to have some sort of elastic pulling force to rotate it. THis is why we thought of the pivoting wheels on the outside. Also to make the totes go into the same position inside of our robot every time we would need to have another set of wheels that are "Fixed" (they actually can move a bit). So after coming up with the idea on the weekend, the students ran with it on Monday and came up with the prototype you can see above.

It worked pretty well at first, but we kept playing with spacing, wheels, elastic force and many other variables that we would think could affect them. After finding out the optimal things we began to CAD them, and they are now what you can see on the robot.

A few days later after the prototype we noticed that it might be possible to upright the Cans with out intake too. To accomplish this we tried adding something to make the can pivot around. Originally this was a just a 2x4 piece of wood someone would step on. We played around to find out if this was possible, and what the approximate distance from the inner wheels, this pivot would need to be. After building the robot the "Boot" as we called it, did not exactly perform as we hoped. During week one of competition (we were not competing) one of the members sketched up a rounded "boot" that would make a better pivot point, and guide the can upright. There is a picture of this in the Engineering Notebook on our website. Also to do this our intake would have to be spaced an extra 2 inches apart, which is why they have Cylinders on them to rotate inward and outward. These cylinders is why the inner "Fixed" wheels are not exactly fixed, they can be pushed outward a bit, but will move the tote back into the center of our robot when we intake it

Also you NEVER need to apologize for asking questions. Asking questions is how you learn. I would not be working on robots for a job, working on completing my Mechanical Engineering Degree and Diploma, and be a mentor on Simbotics if I never asked questions. At one point I was an eager and excited high school student who wondered all of these things too.

Ask questions, ask a lot of questions.

I hope all of this helps, and I wish you and your team a good luck in this upcoming season

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Can confirm.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

That latch! Wow! How hard was it to balance the push-up force from below versus the cylinder's resistance, only to need to use the retraction stroke to then lift the entire stack in order to set it down? Was this accomplished via specific prototyping, calculations, a bit of both?

I also see an axle linking the front/rear latches on either side. Were there any issues with the left/right sets not firing at the same time, and if so what eventually solved it?

What are the 2 pieces hanging off the bottom of the claw for?

The long skinny horizontal cylinders that run front-back didn't seem to import correctly. Are they for pushing the tote stack out of the bot?

There are some really great nuggets of wisdom in the details of this CAD - from the nifty sheet metal carriage all the way down to the idler sprocket assembly design. I dunno how I would approach a rear-leaning tower without sheet metal though. It's a really neat design.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

They for capturing the top of the stack. This picture shows it well:



I was given one of your worn out BB wheels at IRI and it's broached for 3/4" with a hex sleeve put in it. Why is that? Was it not originally 1/2" hex, did the plastic start rounding, or something else?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I know that you can buy those wheels with a 3/4" hex broach off the shelf. I suspect that they were easier to obtain at that point in the season (they always seem to be out of stock for me).

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Ah ok. The only reason I didn't think that would be the case is because there are voids inside the bore.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

In my experience BaneBots ships their 3/4" hex broach wheels with voids inside the bore - back when they were available, BaneBots indicated that voids within the core of the wheel are normal.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

That's good to know. Thank you

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Do you guys have any analysis that was done on your parts that you can share with us? I'm particularly interested in how you guys ensured that your robot was designed to play a full season of matches and practices for your practice bot. How do you train students up to that level of design (if you're doing analysis with the students)? That's pretty high level for most of FRC. I would assume it's the mentors doing it (ok by me), because most students don't have that type of knowledge just yet.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Did 1114 test any other sorts of wheels or is there some resource that you can see which wheels would be best for this function, obviously banebots worked really well but if there is a way to speed up the process of selecting wheels...

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

At the risk of derailing this thread, making that assumption about any team is something no one in FRC should do. Believe me when I tell you that the students of 1114 are passionate, dedicated, and an amazing and one of a kind group. Their mentors are ok too. ;)

I haven't had a chance to look at this CAD yet. Did the harpoon designs get released?

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Of course the students are passionate. I'm not questioning that. It's just that most students can't perform meaningful analysis without some help.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Woohoo, now this is how you ask Questions! Here are some answers:

I was not a part of the design team for the latches or indexer but I can tell you how I would have done the calculations. First I would find out the least amount of force the motors can exert through our gearing with a full stack of Totes, this way it is lifting all 5 totes (The 6th is never pulled up). Once I find that I would need the amount of force from the cylinders on the latches. I would draw a Free Body Diagram of the latch system, and calculate the force pushing the latch open (Totes pushing up), and the force pushing the latch closed (Cylinder Extending force). The force of the latches being closed would have to be less than the force pushing up.
Regarding the latches pushing the stack up, it never does. Originally the latches had slants on them, so we could pull the latches back easily without having to do anything else. However after GTR Central (We dropped a stack in the finals 1 match I believe) we changed this. We then made them have flats on them so the totes cannot come loose. However, since the cylinder could not push the stack up we had to make the indexer pick up the stack ½ an inch so the latches could be pulled back. We made a “Drop Sequence” Button on the driver’s controller. When we dropped a stack the indexer would pick up the stack a bit, pull back the latches, open the intakes to can pick up position (about 2 inches outwards from normal position) and then the driver would back up.
Regarding the axle across the two latches: No we never used cylinders on our prototype because we only had it going up (not dropping a stack). Instead we used pieced of wood screwed to a 2x4 and an elastic to pull it in. Simple and very affective. I know we talked about possibly removing a cylinder, and having only one on each side, and having this was a possibility. Also we knew that if only one of the two cylinders retracted (Shouldn’t be possible anyways) it would be bad, and we would drop the stack.

Reagarding the two pieces of Angle Iron on the bottom of the claw. Mike Marandola was not correct actually (See quote below). These pieces were so that the claw could sit in the back latches. If you look in the CAD model the claw does not sit on the back latches. Instead we had to add these so it would sit on them for when we picked up a can. The angle iron needed to sit around the top tote, maybe it helped to keep them from flying out, but that is not the original reason.
The 1/2inch jhex broached wheels were out of stock, so we bought the ¾ Outside to ½ insde Hex extrusion from Mcmaster-Carr and glued them inside of the wheel. We had 1/2inch also, wear and tear wasn’t the reason though.
If you are talking about Stress analysis and Fatigue Analysis on the Robot CAD, I do not remember ever doing any or seeing it done by any member. We try and over build things (while staying light enough). If it is sticking outside of the robot (the intakes) they will be very strong, because we assume someone will hit them. You can see in the CAD that all of the sheet metal is 1/8 inch thick, and when built it is very strong, and would be very difficult to bend/break. The only thing I can see someone doing some real stress analysis on is something that has a very large force on it (a catapult?). Even then you should just try and over built it. To make everything work for a full season, we have spares. If you go to our pits you can see we sometimes will have full replacements built for the robot, such as assembles intakes etc. If we notice something on the practice robot is warping, breaking, or something is going wrong, we improve it on that robot first and then at competition we fix the competition robot.
You can look at my past post here for the answer
On 1114 we may do things differently than a lot of other teams. While I was on my other team it was different then 1114. It seemed like the mentors would just tell the students to go design the robot, go build the robot, and go program the robot. On Simbotics it is more like Let me help you design the robot, let me show you how you can calculate what part we need for this, let me show you how I would build the robot/let me help you build the robot, or can I show you how I would machine that part and show you how you can program the robot. This is basically what Big Simbot/Little Simbot program is.
For an example: Last year the driver and I designed the intakes. What ended up happening was me sitting next to him directing what he should change, what parts we should/could use, and then me just adding the parts he made to the assembly. He did most of the design work, and I just pushed him along and helped him learn new CAD techniques. We even touched on how to design “In-Context” assemblies. He really seemed to learn more about CAD and enjoyed it more too. He is now applying to university for Mechanical Engineering next year.

Finally, regarding the harpoons, we have not released the CAD yet, but yes we are planning on releasing it, should be up within a week or two.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Were there any fit or tolerance issues with the 3/4 to 1/2 hex extrusion with the 1/2 Hex shaft? Was this the first time 1114 has used this?

Thanks for all the insight on the robot and more importantly the processes.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Nope, there were no issues with this. That being said, we only used this method because of the supply issues with Banebots; not really a technique we'd be interested in repeating.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

I agree that this is not a go to method, but it is another tool if needed. I'm always being shown or finding new things on McMaster's website.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

As requested, here are some more prototypes:

Indexer prototype made of VEX EDR components; Day 4
Drill powered, wood indexer prototype; Day 8
Kiwi drive prototype; Day 8

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

This is really great! It shows the speed that your team arrived at its major design decisions and mechanisms, and your wooden prototypes already outperform a lot of the finished robots we saw this year!

The VEX EDR prototype is an interesting insight. I wonder how many teams prototype with scale models like LEGO or VEX!

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Their 2016 robot's name is Simbot Sentinel.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Affiliated or not, lets keep all that information for members of 1114 to disclose. You should not be broadcasting names or anything affiliated with their team.

-Ronnie

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

All robot names are public on TBA. I think it is pulled from FIRST's website but I am not 100% sure on that.

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Yeah, I got their name from TBA

Re: Team 1114 - Simbot SideSwipe
 

Surprised by that but kinda cool? As future practice though, try not to revive an old thread just to post something about their robot name.

-Ronnie