[Garrett.d.w]

The thought was to have the largest intake that we could possible have. Considering the bumper rules, we decided on an arm. Wanting to simplify, we combined the intake and shooting function in one mechanism. Those were the thoughts that spawned the box.

In the second picture you can see the wonderbox. In the front you can see two rollers, these spin up to both intake and shoot the balls. Beginning just behind the top roller (the side with the lazer cut sheet metal) is a conveyer belt that stretches to the rear of the elongated section. This ferries the balls up and down the inside of the box.

As for what it is, I would classify it as a hybrid between dumper and pitcher. Our main strategy is to get as close as possible and weakly shoot the balls into the hoop, kind of like dumping. The neat trick about this is, that if we spin up the rollers, we can shoot from the key. This feature makes gives it a pitcher like quality.

Here comes the real question, reliability. The base of the robot is designed to do a "hard allignment". This means that we first drive up against the wall of the driver's station, and run into the fender with the front of our robot. This positions the box so that it is centered with all of the hoops. Then, the computer raises the arm to one of the two preset hights (mid and high basket). From here, we shoot.

Because the front rollers are only about 2 feet away from the hoop, accuracy isn't really a thing to be worried about. This is how we get near 100% accuracy. If we shoot from the key (which we only do in autonomous), we make about 50% of our shots because we don't have vision tracking code.

Feel free to ask any questions. I will post here on the competition accuracy of the box after our regional is over.