[archiver]

Posted by Raul.

Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Rolling Meadows & Wheeling HS and Motorola.

Posted on 2/23/2000 6:46 AM MST


In Reply to: WildStang Giving Heartburn... Team #111 posted by Joe Johnson on 2/22/2000 9:12 PM MST:



OK, I will tell you some of the honest capabilities.

• Everything you ever want to know about how we handle balls:

Because of the double intake rollers, it can suck in balls while robot is traveling at full speed of about 8 feet/sec (no problem even if balls are rolling towards or away from robot)

Theoretically, it can hold 12 balls. However, to collect 12 balls everything has to go right and it takes very long. There are two ball collection factors that we have to trade off - jamming and time consummed. The more we try to handle the more we have to be careful how they line up.

Although jamming can be an issue, we have a contingency feature built in if balls jam. The overlapping rollers of the extension can be retracted to unjam balls.

It can easily handle 8 balls with a 95% probability of not jamming. And it should take about 25 seconds if they are not too far away. It should take about 15 seconds if they are all lined up. Same when 'catching them from the human player. As the picture shows, the top door acts as a backboard for the human player who can just roll the balls over the top of the player station.

It can handle 10 balls with about 75% probability of not jamming. This should take about 40 seconds

With 12 balls, the odds of them jamming goes to about 50% and it could take a minute or more.

All times are rough and based on minimal interference from other robots.

We obviously will decide how many to pick up as we go. If there is minimal interference (such as may happen when a couple of bots are fighting on the ramp), then we can pick up more.

• Yes, of course we tilt almost flat to go under the limbo bar. All tilt positions are pre-programmed in software.

• We can hang and although we have not actually tried it, it can theoretically lift another robot along with ours. The linear lift / extension is the strongest we have ever had. No multi-section extension lift this year.

• One feature which is not obvious (not shown on in the picture) is that we have a mechanism to pop balls out of the goal. However, this was a last minute addition. So, it has not been tested while on the robot.

Overall, I think we will do well. We did not get anywhere near the practice time we needed because we had to go on a diet (I hope our scale is accurate because we are barely under the minimum).

Raul