Chief Delphi - Best Ball Collecting device of 2002

If you really wanna know about 95...

The entire front end of the 'bot is devoted to the ball. The back end is filled with 'guts'.

There are a total of 10 (or close to it) rollers that run the width of the bot. There is one set of 4 furthest to the front, and a second set of 6 behind them, the width of a soccer ball between the two sets. Each roller has it's own coating of rubberized fabric that gives a good grip on the balls and cusions the rollers from the impact of balls hitting them. The balls move from roller to roller at very high speed, with out the hooper on top they will fly 7 or 8 feet in the air. The extra cusioning avoids dents in the rollers.

Each set is powered by a fisherprice motor with a custom gear box (I don't know the exact ratio). They are belt driven (half inch timing belt i belive, don't quote me on that though). They spin at several hundred RPM at least. When the rollers run inwards balls are pulled in and up into the hopper. The rollers and hopper are seperated by a 'check valve'. The valve is made of poly carb 'fingers' and acts like a lobster trap. Balls have enough energy from the rollers to pass through with out jamming, but thier weight isn't enough to drop them back down into the rollers.

The roller motors are under variable speed, since as more balls are picked up the rollers must spin faster to displace the ones already collected. This is done with a pot on the operators switch box. Needless to say, correctly adjusting the roller speed is a fine art.

On paper, we should be able to get 40 balls in a goal with in the first minute of the match. More often it's been a matter of waiting for our ally to get a hold of a goal before we dump our balls.

So thats pretty much how you get 20 balls off the ground in 5 seconds...

-Andy A.