We've seen 1657's robot at the Israel Regional, (
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=134770) and 1750's robot at the Oklahoma Regional (
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=135990) and wanted to share our own conveyor (1987) design this year.
This year, our team was really determined to do something outside the box and our students really latched on to the idea of a factory, bringing the totes to the robot before stacking. The robot itself is fully autonomous once the match begins, using multiple sensors along the conveyor and the stacking mechanism to recognize totes. The only human interaction is the feeding of totes. We have the ability to change the height of our stacks from 1 to 6 which allows us play with teams that could cap a recycle bin on top of smaller stacks of totes. Our pneumatic pushers allow us to push the stack away from the robot before beginning to stack the next set of totes.
We went into the season knowing our max contribution alone would be 60 points, but paired with the right robot we could score much higher. At the Buckeye Regional, we were fortunate to play with 4269 during qualifications who was a can stealer and could cap stacks of 4. They were a dream partner and chose us from the second seed. While they and 2399 worked on getting noodles into bins and placed, we sent out stacks of totes.
QF1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb3_xumiBRA
SF2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2KlVI9QOQ (You can hear at the beginning where the announcer says we need just 142 points to stay alive. After scoring 162 points, we realize the math was wrong and we really needed 165 points)
Unfortunately, our run ended after that last match. We are currently waitlisted for Champs and plan to continue to refine our design and to participate in a few offseason events this summer.
The students made a stretch goal at the beginning of the season and then went on to make that goal. We are so proud of our students that words can hardly describe it.