Team 2415: We Suck...
 

...Literally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDzJ_lVwG6o

This was our first day of practice. We use 4 small cims to drive and a vandoor motor to rotate the arm and a small fisher price that sucks.
We were in the high school's library.
And yes it sucks very well and is hard to pull off.
We have four sonar sensors that are being coded right now that are being configured into a dashboard to help the drivers see where the ball is in relation to the dome.
Also this vacuum is half as powerful as our real one.
If you have any questions just post away and I will answer them.
Good Luck to all teams from 2415 Westminster WiredCats Robotics

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

That was AWESOME! You do suck! :D That's an amazingly good design, especially for a rookie team.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Wow, that is a really cool design!!! Never would have thought of a sucker design!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

very cool!

our team experimented with vacuums using last year's venturi generators, but our suction never worked when the suction cup was on a seam...

how did you get around that? just used more suction?

anyway that is an awesome design! you should think about maybe putting a piston in there to give the ball a little push when releasing :)
good luck!

-Leav

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Haha yeah we would if we had the weight. We are like 7 pounds over weight right now but we should be under by the end of today.
And we just used more suction. The actual suction dome that we are going to use is run by a fisher price on a one to two ratio so our turbine spins twice as fast.
Thanks and good luck to all teams.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

your overpass looks really loose and "springy"

That is the suckiest robot I've ever seen :D Nice job.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Haha thanks and yeah, the thing about the rack is that we knew it was going to bend so we made it higher and it is at 6' 10" in stead of 6' 6"

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

That looks awesome!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

that is super awesome

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

That looks pretty cool. We are doing something similar and I'm wondering if you could post up some pics to compare our systems.

Good luck and I can't wait to see it at peachtree!!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Did you make the vacuum pump yourself? If not, what did you pull it out of?

Nice idea!

Hmm... wonder where they're going to drill 7lbs worth of holes... :ahh:

-q

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Wow, nice video! You guys suck pretty good.

I just hope the ball stands that still for you in competition.

Don

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Yeah, that was our one concern about tracking the ball down as well as the speed of the arm.
Regarding the ball moving around, we have some pretty skilled drivers and some sonar sensors that we are trying to use to help us with tracking the ball. We feel that it is just an issue of the drivers being able to get it, not the suction onto the ball.
But yeah you are right, we need a ton of practice because we all know with 6 robot and 4 enormous balls nothing is going to be standing still.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

AWESOME idea. it definently works but its a little slowish.

-Misfit

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Here are two pictures of our turbine. It is a Dirt Devil hand held vacuum modified to fit a Fisher-Price motor with a 1:2 gear ratio. This assembly is attached to a 20" diameter dome.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thats pretty interesting. I wouldn't have thought to use a hand held vacuum. Ours is slightly bigger and more powerful:cool:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/30155

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Awesome! How large is your dome? With our 20" dome, our vacuum system produces about 200 lbs. of attachment force. Which should be plenty. :D

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

We're using a 21" funnel. The biggest thing with ours is that we lock onto the ball immediately by just touching it. We dont have to be precise or wait for the vacuum to lock. I think ours was calculated at over 300lbs of force but we are also using 2 fisher price motors and a larger impeller. Either way thats an awesome robot especially for a rookie team.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Wow we discussed this briefly for our team and didn't think it would work, congratulations.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

So did our team, we even built a vacum, but it had no where near the strenght of that one. we decided on a mortor/catapult desighn.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Honestly I didn't think it would work either but thats why we have an engineering mentor that specializes in pneumatics who had the whole thing figured out and taught all of us how it worked. We're also shooting the ball and our current prototype is getting about 6.5ft completely vertically and 12 ft when launched at a 45 degree angle

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

That's an amazing design.
Most definately. [:
Practice makes "perfect".
(I put perfect in quotations b/c nothing is ever perfect)

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Impressive. :p

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

I would have never thought at team could create enough suction to pick up a ball. Great job.

Have you tried it on various inflation levels? While the balls in competition will be replaced if they go seriously flat, they will still use them if they're just a little soft.

I didn't see a good enough side-on view, so I have to ask the inevitable question - does it stay within 80 inches?

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Yes we have tried both FULLY inflated and half way. We will actually try almost no air tomorrow.

Thanks for the compliments!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

WOW You guys suck so much its impressive.
Good luck at regionals, maybe if you suck enough you will win a whole bunch of awards and matches! :D

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Nice Bot. It looks like its really hard to grab the ball. how long does it take for u guys to score

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

awesome! great idea


P.S. Please don't let mentor martha pick the music for your next vid. K thanks

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

As of right now it isnt that easy to grab. However we have four sonar sensors that we are rigging up and we will be able to "see" on a dashboard on our laptop in order to help us grab the ball.
We don't really have a full field setup or anything and since we were in a library, we weren't able to really time it. But if we have the ball in the down position it takes about 10 seconds to score.
And the more we practice the easier it gets because that was literally the first time we drove it. But we really need to practice.
Thanks and good luck to all teams.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

I really like the design. I love the thread title

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

I must say, integrating a Fisher-Price to a Dirt Devil is very Creative! I was not expecting to see many robots that use suction to pick up the trackball. What is the quickest time your team has been able to drive up to the ball and pick it up? I counted about 7 seconds on the video, but I'm sure you've practiced more since.

Just a suggestion for your video: If you are planning on using it for promotional purposes (and I would highly encourage it), cut the video down to a 30 - 45 second highlight real. Feel free to PM me for suggestions.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

We actually didnt get to drive recently becasue the programmers are selfish and want the robot for more than a day befo ship. I mean......c'mon!:eek:

but part of the "delay" was because the drivers where getting instructions. And there have been time when the ball was attached but the driver was waiting for instructions. Also, the impeller/turbine on the robot is not the actual one. Its actually about half the speed of the one we will be using. Hope fully we will be able to get that one on ASAP and have promo video within a few days.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thanks for the advice on videos, we'll keep it in mind for next time.

Right now it is taking too long to harvest the ball. Part of the problem is the vacuum doesn't really give any good visual cues to when it is attached, (we are constructing a sensor system to deal with that). Once that is addressed, the ball postion sensor system is finished, the controls are finalized, and we get more practice, it should go significantly faster.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thanks, we thought so too till one of the kids and his parent went out and tried it. The thing is that the compression of the foam allows it to partially fill in the ridges in the nylon helping us make it a lot easier to grab onto the ball.
Good luck to everyone!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

We tried to suck, but gave up. You guys really do suck!!!!!:yikes:

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Good job, but the music wasn't very good. Next time I would recommend something a little more intense. (like Enter Sandman):ahh:

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

THANK YOU! I said Sandman was the way to go.....but programmers are stupid...haha JK Ian

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Hey, are you guys really a rookie team? Another question, did some calculations and may be being dense here, but how did you get an arm long enough to reach the ball but also fit within the preliminary constraints?

Very impressive design though and good luck at regionals!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Our arm is skinny enough to fit inside the two posts. It rotates inside, just above our drive train inside the size requirements. I will try to post a picture tomorrow. :cool:

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thanks! And yes we are a rookie team. The team is comprised of a couple engineering mentors, a few school teachers and admin., and four college freshman that all participated in FIRST at one point in their high school career. The freshmen in college that are student mentors are from team 1002, 1415, and 2119. We all attend different schools and are from SPSU, Georgia Tech, and Emory.

The students of the team built over 80% of the robot with advising from the student mentors and engineers.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Wait, are you saying that your bot shoots the ball out of the vacuum funnel? Please explain! :confused:


And to team 2415, that bot is really cool. If you are having trouble picking it up, maybe build some arms that hold the ball in place? You could also just make it suck harder. Good luck to you all!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Yes that is what I'm saying. I will post up a video after this saturday of it working because we are still waiting on our finalized funnel. In testing we got over 12ft of horizontal distance.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

We're using a vacuum as well. Is it a single or multiple stage, and how many inches of water can you pull? We have a two stage using the FP without the gear box we can pull almost 26 inches of water, which equates to a little over 1 psi. Based on the surface area of the ball inside our vacuum cup that is close to 100lbs of force on the ball. The ball is immovable when we have it in the cup, its pretty awesome. We'll be posting a video as soon as electrical gets done.... *sigh*

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

to add to that we also have team 1311, kell robotics, and their mentor Mr. Barker, who has supported us from the beginning.:D

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Im not sure how many inches of water it can pull but the one in the video has about 100 lbs of force but we geared it on our actually one to have about 200 lbs of force. I myself haven't seen the 200 lb one in action but everyone else tells me that basically our arms have a better chance of giving than the ball does.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

We are using vacuum to ACQUIRE and to HOLD the ball. We are also using pneumatics to SHOOT the ball, all through one of these FUNNELS.:D

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

How do you post pictures? The only way I see is to post them from an internet link. I have pictures of our bot but only on my computer. Ian, I sent you the pictures if you can post them.:cool:

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

When I post pictures, I host them on a site like Photobucket or Google Picasa Web Albums.

That said, here they are:

Our robot in the starting position.

Here is our new control system for the arm. We have 3 preset positions for our arm. A cancel button incase something goes wrong(not the code). We also have a manual override for finessing the suction cup. A switch for the vacuum of course. And we also have disable and auto switches for testing.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

That's a creepy amount of posts...
Well, don't get discouraged! Oh, and that vacuume idea is cool.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

hahaha I love the "SUCK!!!" button

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Hey team 1771, I saw your robot at scrimmage today and it was awesome. The way shoot the ball is ingenious. AWESOME Robot.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thank you Santosh. That scrimmage was really awesome...Im just glad everything has come together. We still have a bunch of programming to make it faster and easier to drive but its working well. Im glad we werent the only sucker. You guys looked really good especially for a rookie bot. See you at Peachtree!!

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Wow that is a really awesome design. Only thing is it looks slow...? And how easily can the ball be grabbed. Like let's say you were jostled as you were trying to pick up the ball, would you be able to grab it while being messed with?

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Thanks team 1771, that shooter sucker thing was so cool looking and well implemented.
jumpe1990, Thanks! The robot can pick up the ball very easily once we get locked on. We just need to get some driver practice in. at scrimmage today we were able to get about 3 in one match. Hopefully we can get that number up to about 4 or 5 in the next couple of days. I think that we are able to pick it up while being messed with but we haven't really experienced too much of that. Also we sped up the arm about a second or two.

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

WOAh! Thats cool! Great design! Hoping to see it soon in real life action! Good luck!:p

( lol the " we suck" in the title... ye delete that! lol)

Re: Team 2415: We Suck...
 

Have you tried it with an under-inflated ball? My guess is the inflation of the balls will not be consistent and a softer ball will have more sag in the material.
Still an awesome idea! Good luck!