Team 1902 Roller Grabber Teaser

[Dan Richardson]

Originally Posted by Cyberphil

Very interesting! I am impressed!

Are you going to keep that speed? (I assume so). If so, do you have some kind of clutch system to prevent the cims from stalling, or a sensor on the back of the arm? Or nothing at all.

We are thinking of dropping the speed, but only slightly, using Banebots in place of the Cims as the Cims are probably overpowered for this application. The cims were all we had to prototype with. A "gripped" tube will be detected by a limit switch on the back of gripper. We are debating the need for an encoder to sense the rotation and control the speed.

The tube is captured by not allowing the wheels to back drive, if you watch closely when the tubes are released the wheels are driven backwards. We'll make sure to have the controls in place to keep that from happening.

The cool thing about the roller gripper is that it can allow for "easy" tube manipulation ala 233 in 2007. We found that this can be difficult on the points of the square and triangle but every semi circular cross section is mostly adjustable.

Adam, the tools in the video are at a mentors house, who was assisting in the fabrication of the gripper.

And of course this mentors house does come fully equipped with a chop saw.