Well, it's in the crate now... and sitting at customs, but never mind that...
We'll be posting a few photos to the media section later, but here's a quick glance at what we hope will be a good scoring machine. It was inspired by the teams last year that were able to drive up on the ramp and "slam dunk" the balls without ever really aiming. With the low front on our bot we should be able to just drive forward, smash into the base of the rack and self-align. With the ringer held parallel to the floor, it should be an easy fit.
At least that is the theory. We are equipped with a CMU cam and three ultrasonic sensors for finding the light first, then the base of the rack. These can be switched on in telop as well as auto, so scoring on the back side of the rack will hopefully be easier... although just smashing into the base with the bumper aligns us pretty well, too. We still need to test the sensors on the open floor, but it works in small tests on our mock up in the shop.
The lift can reach all the way to the top, but we will probably focus on the middle and bottom rows.
We have no ramp, but can climb at a 20 degree incline, perhaps steeper, and have a belly pan to protect us from forklift designs. It runs on mecanum wheels, and we seem to have them tweaked for fairly decent performance.
Some clips from the build period are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyn9e0cT3-A the sound and editing leaves a bit to be desired, but you can see the robot come together from the first test drive chassis, to testing the PID feedback loops on the drive wheels, to doing some test climbs right through final arm operation. As usual, wooden components play a significant role... "wood is good".
See you in a week.
Jason