Thanks to all of you! We really appreciate the support, and are very glad to be with you guys at the regionals. I think we have a great group of teams for the UCF Regionals and it will be a very interesting year.
As for the robot, I wanted to clear up specifics for people who didn't come to 179's awesome scrimmage. First off, the robot frame and arm is made entirely of aluminum posts from outdoor screen enclosures, creating a easy to repair, light, and moderately strong inexpensive frame.
We use gravity a lot on this bot, and the picture shows the stabilizers down, but the arm is still up. Basically what happens is we jerk the robot and gravity pulls the arm and stabilizers to their extended positions. The arm itself is simply a 1" dowel rod wrapped with baseball bat grip rubber.
And believe it or not, we actually are using the camera. We have a 2/3 working autonomous mode as of right now, but we should be able to get it running fully at the competition. The camera can recognize the colors, but just not drive to it (accurately) yet. We in fact captured the first images from it working on the bot the night before ship!
The paper banner on the back of the robot is the only thing that (still) isnt completed. It will be replaced with plexiglass, and it folds in the center for easy access to all equipment. The sides will also have triangular pieces of plexiglass, just not as thick of material.
Anyway, probably way more information than anyone wanted to know, but thanks for stopping by and good luck to all at the competition!
For more information, check out our website at www.kickbot1523.com.
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