Thanks, everyone. It's only impressive if it actually works, though.
The last of the parts we need were sent out to our amazing sponsor today, so we expect to have a completed robot by the end of the weekend. This past weekend, we were able to put the drive together and run it through some paces. We've also assembled and tested the final catapult linkage and the base assembly that rotates the collectors. So far, everything's looking good and coming together nicely.
The four pancake cylinders facing downward shift the octocanum drive modules onto traction wheels.
For a short pass, we'll have a 'soft eject' function that rolls the ball off the back of the catapult. We believe that'll be faster and more effective than trying to feed the ball back out of the collector. That's not in the model yet; we'll probably verify proof of concept tonight and it'll be in the model tomorrow.
This is definitely the most ambitious robot we've ever built. The support of a sheet metal shop has allowed us to design mechanisms in a way that we've never done before and really freed us from some of the constraints we've had in the past.