Originally Posted by burnzkid (Post 1098839)

We're looking into programming the Kinect to help control an aim-able barrel, depending on distance from the hoop and which hoop we're aiming for.

Originally Posted by Starke (Post 1098780)

Check out 1771 on FRC Designs Gripper page (See Link Below). This arm used a suction system to grab the ball and then used a device to launch the ball.

http://frc-designs.com/html/grippers.html

Matt

Originally Posted by Tubatroopa (Post 1098757)

I was actually thinking of a similar system to this. There is no reload time on the shooter so shots can be fired quite quickly.

Originally Posted by akoscielski3 (Post 1098866)

Careful about saying that there is no reload time. In 2006 our shooter would have to get back up to speed after shooting only a couple balls. You lose a lot of energy when you shoot a ball.

Originally Posted by seg9585 (Post 1098832)

As a 2006 FRC participant (Aim High) who built a robot using the pitching machine launcher design, I have a few comments about it:

First off, calibrating the wheels ended up being a little more annoying than expected. Even though we used encoders to measure and even out the speed between each wheel, we found the release angle was still inconsistent -- the balls needed to be squeezed by the wheels a bit to get the traction needed to accelerate the ball, and the balls would end up flinging a bit to the right or left depending on which wheel made contact with the ball first and how the ball re-expanded.
For Aim High this wasn't a big deal because the target was relatively large, but with baskets this year we need a lot more precision.

Also, the ball originally came out without spin, so the balls flew like a knuckleball, making scoring unpredictable. We changed the speed of one wheel to add spin, but then had to apply a directional bias since the spin did induce lift on one side of the ball (still better than a knuckleball)!

Lastly, we had to run those large softball wheels with CIM motors to get them spinning fast enough, but when they were on all match it quickly drained our battery. In later matches we had to turn off the spinner during collection periods just to save power, then wait for the wheels to spin up to speed again.

I did see effective single-wheel launchers against a static surface that took out a lot of the multi-wheel variable issues we had, and they seemed to work well.

Originally Posted by the man (Post 1099032)

I think our ball launcher should have the wheels spinning around 80mph. But that's a rough estimate we'll see what actually happens.