How to pick up a frisbee

[kuraikou]

My team (4183) has been having trouble deciding if we want to make our robot able to pick up Frisbees and if we want to how can we easily pick them up and deposit them in our shooter.

any ideas?

That plunger and racket idea looked pretty good to me....



On a more serious note, one idea we had was using a dustpan-like mechanism to get under the frisbees and flip them into our hopper.

[Twest3259]

the simplest solution i could think of was to pick them up like you'd pick up a basketball. just use rollers to suck it up.

[kuraikou]

Originally Posted by Twest3259

the simplest solution i could think of was to pick them up like you'd pick up a basketball. just use rollers to suck it up.

But than how would you put them into your shooter?

[Twest3259]

Originally Posted by kuraikou

But than how would you put them into your shooter?

a conveyor or elevator system that rolls them up and straight into the shooter or hopper.

[Wildcats1378]

That's the easy part. The hard part is determining which way they are facing, and then how to flip them.

I think that picking up the frisbees is going to be a waste of time. There's a pretty small number sitting on the field, and the main way to get most of the frisbee's is through the feeding station.

However, I was thinking of a conveyer system which would have a little hatch open. Above the hatch would be a suction cup on a piston. It would go down, pick up the frisbee, then deposit it on the conveyer belt. Simple and fast. Doesn't solve the upside down issue though...

[ENeyman]

One solution is simply to ignore the upside down discs and just go for the ones that are right side up.

On that note, however, does the manual explicitly state that the discs on the field at the beginning of the match are face up? I assume so, but I can't find a specific rule.

[EricH]

I think it's quite possible to build a launcher that will toss discs equally well when they're upside down as right side up, or near enough that there isn't a noticeable difference at the type of ranges you might see in this game. I've heard a human throw type called the "Hammer" or the "Tomahawk"; it goes from vertical to inverted in flight and stays inverted. It also travels a fair ways, if thrown correctly.

[Rishabhgadi]

I was wondering..Would it be completely legal to back up against the deposit slots and have them land in a hopper right away?

[MetalJacket]

yep

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Rishabhgadi

I was wondering..Would it be completely legal to back up against the deposit slots and have them land in a hopper right away?

Sure.

[gabrielau23]

Originally Posted by Rishabhgadi

I was wondering..Would it be completely legal to back up against the deposit slots and have them land in a hopper right away?

I don't see a problem with that....I was going to suggest that to my team, anyway....

[z_beeblebrox]

Perhaps have a toilet plunger end on a pneumatic arm come down and stick on the disc and then pull it back up. On the way up, the disc would hit a mechanical stop and fall of the plunger into a ramp or hopper.

[gabrielau23]

I'm not so sure a toilet plunger would work so well....for one thing, the suction isn't actually that great. The hard rubber pretty much prevents that. I think the best thing is to just use a dustpan-ish mechanicsmand drive around with that.

[kuraikou]

Originally Posted by z_beeblebrox

Perhaps have a toilet plunger end on a pneumatic arm come down and stick on the disc and then pull it back up. On the way up, the disc would hit a mechanical stop and fall of the plunger into a ramp or hopper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tEbK8S7-8

a cool plunger pickup system