#teamconveyor
 

We've seen 1657's robot at the Israel Regional, (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=134770) and 1750's robot at the Oklahoma Regional (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=135990) and wanted to share our own conveyor (1987) design this year.

This year, our team was really determined to do something outside the box and our students really latched on to the idea of a factory, bringing the totes to the robot before stacking. The robot itself is fully autonomous once the match begins, using multiple sensors along the conveyor and the stacking mechanism to recognize totes. The only human interaction is the feeding of totes. We have the ability to change the height of our stacks from 1 to 6 which allows us play with teams that could cap a recycle bin on top of smaller stacks of totes. Our pneumatic pushers allow us to push the stack away from the robot before beginning to stack the next set of totes.

We went into the season knowing our max contribution alone would be 60 points, but paired with the right robot we could score much higher. At the Buckeye Regional, we were fortunate to play with 4269 during qualifications who was a can stealer and could cap stacks of 4. They were a dream partner and chose us from the second seed. While they and 2399 worked on getting noodles into bins and placed, we sent out stacks of totes.

QF1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb3_xumiBRA

SF2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2KlVI9QOQ (You can hear at the beginning where the announcer says we need just 142 points to stay alive. After scoring 162 points, we realize the math was wrong and we really needed 165 points)

Unfortunately, our run ended after that last match. We are currently waitlisted for Champs and plan to continue to refine our design and to participate in a few offseason events this summer.

The students made a stretch goal at the beginning of the season and then went on to make that goal. We are so proud of our students that words can hardly describe it.

Re: #teamconveyor
 

A couple of pictures of our conveyor:

Re: #teamconveyor
 

After the one finals match, I (along with several other of the field crew) had to run out and get a picture before letting field reset go to work. This machine was absolutely beautiful to watch, and I'm glad I got to see it in person.

Re: #teamconveyor
 

Some may want to know how it looks in transport configuration. We used the aid of a wood base that was placed on our lifter to hold it. The students had to practice quite a bit to get the 60 second timing down. It seemed like they were the early ones off of the field for most matches. Here you go:

Re: #teamconveyor
 

I do love me a good conveyor bot... it would be awesome if you guys made it to Worlds off that wait list, because I'd like to see it in person (assuming my team makes it as well)

Re: #teamconveyor
 

What an incredible machine. It's so cool seeing you guys build that wall of totes. I'd love to see video of you guys deploying the robot. That must have taken a lot of design to make fit.

Hope the wait list works out and we get to see it at worlds!

Re: #teamconveyor
 

Not only is that an amazing robot, the level of teamwork between your alliance was beautiful to watch. Sharing the container from robot to robot in the semifinals was a cool move!

I hope the waitlist falls in your favor!

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You can view the Broncobots deploying there robot in Qual Match 37 at GKC when they play with Team Driven. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...8LC-rnmy_v5NoU

Re: #teamconveyor
 

There has been talk around Missouri S&T that The Broncobots have a chance to be a real force to be reckoned with at champs should they go.

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Your robot is pretty cool. I enjoyed watching that match!

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It is really satisfying to watch that thing in action. I'm hoping I get a chance to see it in person at Champs!

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In case anyone is interested, here is the C++ code for the robot - https://github.com/FRCTeam1987/Robot2015.

The robot is fully autonomous for the duration of teleop.

Ken

Re: #teamconveyor
 

That is a good example of us deploying while on the field.

That match was from our first regional and, like so many teams, our issues were fully resolved at our second regional.

We had to run rubber bands from our active roller on the upper end to the first passive roller the tote hits, thus making it active. We also had to figure out exactly how to get the totes to come from the chute door, yes chute door, reliably. Once our human player figured that out we consistently worked as designed.

I am trying to find video of the students getting it out of transport configuration, but that may hard to find as that is not normally something people would think of to film.

Re: #teamconveyor
 

its nice to see another conveyor robot. Unfortunately we had tons of minor issues spring up throughout qualifiers, finally got everything working and got on the 8th seed alliance, and had our drivers station malfunction both quarterfinal matches. Our small team could not afford to go to two regionals otherwise we could have been a real threat.

#teamconveyor
#teamcrane

Re: #teamconveyor
 

In this match we actually lowered once teleoperated period started because the FMS would not allow us to select an autonomous program through our smart dashboard. However, it is fully capable of achieving deployment during autonomous and not wasting any time at the beginning of a match.

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In one of our practice matches together at Buckeye we ran our 20pt autonomous with you starting in the stowed configuration. By the time you unfurled we were out of the way. It worked out pretty well but we found ourselves on opposing alliances every other time.

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That is awesome.

Great machine and way to think of a totally unique solution.

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The Elwood half of our Blues Bros is a conveyor belt on wheels, if that counts.

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How is it exactly that your totes rotate 90 degrees?

Re: #teamconveyor
 

Thanks for the question. The tote only has to be rotated about 45 degrees since the wall that the chute is on is not perpendicular to the side wall. This rotation is achieved by the side rails on our conveyor and the pull on the tote from the lower conveyor polycord. It was a lot of trial and error to get the walls perfectly positioned, but now it works great.

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If anyone is interested in seeing the mechanisms up close here is a video from some shop testing we did about a month ago. We were trying to find an issue with two totes passing over a sensor too quickly and being sent into the lifter together; this issue can be seen near the end of the video. The code has since been optimized to prevent issues like this and has been sped up significantly. Also, if an issue like this happened to occur in a match we can reverse the conveyor and continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id2U-UlT--k

Re: #teamconveyor
 

We spent about 15 minutes silently staring at it trying to figure out how to get it into transport. We had to practice getting in and out of transport quickly. We hit the 28 inch wide transport limit with no less than a 1/4 inch to spare.