pic: 2015 robot offseason redesign

[traxxasracr1]

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[asid61]

What is your lift geared at? We ran a 1-side-support lift with a good ball bearing setup on 2x1, and found that at least 21:1 with a 1.06" diameter pulley was necessary to lift 6 totes + bin.
Apart from that, looks very good.


EDIT: How strong is that can stabilizer.

[traxxasracr1]

Originally Posted by asid61

What is your lift geared at? We ran a 1-side-support lift with a good ball bearing setup on 2x1, and found that at least 21:1 with a 1.06" diameter pulley was necessary to lift 6 totes + bin.
Apart from that, looks very good.


EDIT: How strong is that can stabilizer.

The lift is geared at about 12:1, but its being powered by 2 full CIMs, the gearing is the same as we have been running all year and it lifted 6 totes plus a bin no problem. And the can stabilizer is all 1/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick pivoting on 3/8 bushings, I ran some simulations and it should hold the bin just fine

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by traxxasracr1

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I love seeing teams like yours see success and just keep looking higher. The re-design looks smart, and similar to what 5254 did between Champs and IRI.

First of all, I'm not familar with your machine, so how do you plan to play with this robot? Are you a landfill robot or a feeder robot (or both)?

It's always good to look at teams that are better than you and see what they're doing and learn from it, but you also have to know why they did things the way they did.
What is the exact purpose of each improvement?
It's very easy to say "Well 1114 did it so it must be smart"- except that they had a very specific set of design criteria that you may not have.

Lastly, where are the bottlenecks in your gameplay, and how are you addressing these? For most feeder robots this year, they had something on their robot that was slower than the chute door, so that was their bottleneck, so improving things like elevator speed and using a long ramp didn't help them at all. Similarly, if you're a landfill robot, there's no reason to gear your elevator faster than you can possibly collect a tote. Understanding what the slowest part of your gameplay is this year and figuring out how to improve that is what continuous improvement is all about in 2015.

Good luck with your re-design and your off-season events!

[Dylan179]

it looks over 6.5 ft tall in the 6 stack pic.

[traxxasracr1]

Originally Posted by Dylan179

it looks over 6.5 ft tall in the 6 stack pic.

From the ground to the highest point on the robot, it is 77.75" tall, which is to the tip of the sprocket, which is going to be moved down, so it will actually be closer to 77.5" tall when finished.

[traxxasracr1]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

I love seeing teams like yours see success and just keep looking higher. The re-design looks smart, and similar to what 5254 did between Champs and IRI.

First of all, I'm not familar with your machine, so how do you plan to play with this robot? Are you a landfill robot or a feeder robot (or both)?

It's always good to look at teams that are better than you and see what they're doing and learn from it, but you also have to know why they did things the way they did.
What is the exact purpose of each improvement?
It's very easy to say "Well 1114 did it so it must be smart"- except that they had a very specific set of design criteria that you may not have.

Lastly, where are the bottlenecks in your gameplay, and how are you addressing these? For most feeder robots this year, they had something on their robot that was slower than the chute door, so that was their bottleneck, so improving things like elevator speed and using a long ramp didn't help them at all. Similarly, if you're a landfill robot, there's no reason to gear your elevator faster than you can possibly collect a tote. Understanding what the slowest part of your gameplay is this year and figuring out how to improve that is what continuous improvement is all about in 2015.

Good luck with your re-design and your off-season events!

This year we focused on the human feeder station (you can see one of our full cycles at 0:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUsPfgUsUAM), however, with these changes we made, we would like to primarily become a landfill robot while still having the capability of doing human feeder.

The changes we made were all designed ourselves, but inspired by other teams. The intakes for example, we had problems with the totes sliding out when we backed up with a tote, and we wouldn't grab it all the way and it would fall out the front, so we added the second wheel from what we saw on the Killer Bees robot to keep contact with the tote at all times so it doesn't slide out when the robot is moving. Also, we didn't have a way of getting knocked over trash cans with this new bin stabilizer, so we added the pivot on it based on The Cheesy Poofs.

Our main bottleneck this year at the feeder station was lining up to the chute and correcting totes that would fall in sideways, so the hope for this design is to add a third set of wheels above the front wheels to drive the tote in (similar to The Citrus Circuits). Our biggest problem in the landfill was that we had no stabilization of the RC and it would just fall off if we weren't careful, which is the point of the stabilizer.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by traxxasracr1

This year we focused on the human feeder station (you can see one of our full cycles at 0:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUsPfgUsUAM), however, with these changes we made, we would like to primarily become a landfill robot while still having the capability of doing human feeder.

The changes we made were all designed ourselves, but inspired by other teams. The intakes for example, we had problems with the totes sliding out when we backed up with a tote, and we wouldn't grab it all the way and it would fall out the front, so we added the second wheel from what we saw on the Killer Bees robot to keep contact with the tote at all times so it doesn't slide out when the robot is moving. Also, we didn't have a way of getting knocked over trash cans with this new bin stabilizer, so we added the pivot on it based on The Cheesy Poofs.

Our main bottleneck this year at the feeder station was lining up to the chute and correcting totes that would fall in sideways, so the hope for this design is to add a third set of wheels above the front wheels to drive the tote in (similar to The Citrus Circuits). Our biggest problem in the landfill was that we had no stabilization of the RC and it would just fall off if we weren't careful, which is the point of the stabilizer.

Awesome! You have a very clear idea of why you made each change and how that's going to affect your ability to play the game. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time for thorough testing, however, because sometimes stuff comes up that you wouldn't expect when you redesign.

5254 went through a similar redesign, and we sped up our elevator so we could stack faster. However, we discovered at Midknight Mayhem that the lexan tabs we used to lift totes ended up taking more powerful impacts with the new speed, and as a result, we dropped a lot of stacks at MidKnight Mayhem. We fixed this for IRI by making the tabs much wider, which worked great most of the time, but occasionally they would catch under the rim of a stack we had just placed, and our driver would have to wiggle the robot to get the stack to place correctly without dropping the can.

I'm not trying to be critical here, because I love that you're putting in this work to improve in the off-season, I just want to make sure you're taking these things into account so you can be successful at your off-season events.