So how many of you actually have a working minibot/deployment?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Brandtlamonte

Im just wondering if minibots will be like tower-hangers last year. To where only about 5-10% of the robots competing had them.

What's the point of having a good minibot if you don't have a reliable deployment system to get them to the pole?

[Bruceb]

We have one.
See it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrbb9g9EHM

Hope I did that right.


Bruce

[MagiChau]

Originally Posted by Bruceb

We have one.
See it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrbb9g9EHM

Hope I did that right.


Bruce

Looks nice but how are you going to make sure your robot is aligned.

[Bruceb]

You cant see it in the video but we drop an allignment device off the back of the bot that buts up against the pole base.
[IMG][/IMG]

[PayneTrain]

We have a bat, that when released by a servo, gets surgical tubing'd into the tower. Then a pin releases, allowing the minibot to get slung down with its platform having more tubing on it. Fast and little accuracy required.
..
..
Providing if it works when we get it on the robot...

[VKP]

Team 1899 does! =D about 4-5 seconds

[liam.larkin]

We are ready to go. Deployment minibot and all. My amazing programers have eliminated the need for my team to line it up. We use three IR sensors two that see the base and one up top that looks at the pole. We have used these sensors before too see how accurate they can be look at this video from last year. Obviously this isnt the same thing as this year but we were able to use this code and modify accordingly.
http://www.frc272.com/Ideas/2010_TargetAcquisition.wmv

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by liam.larkin

We are ready to go. Deployment minibot and all. My amazing programers have eliminated the need for my team to line it up.

Nice! Our alignment system is rather lower tech than that...

[SteveGPage]

We decided to NOT build a mini-bot! Instead, we built a great deployment system, that will deploy a mini-bot on to the tower as long as we are +/- 5 inches off of center from the pole. We spent two weeks designing the specs for the deployment system, and then sent those specs to our FTC teams....

We let our FTC teams build the mini-bots, and we have a great one that we are bringing with us to our regionals!

A big THANK YOU! to the Ryken HS FTC LabVIEW Knights, for a job well done!

[Chris is me]

We had a ~4.5 second climb with a battery that died immediately after on our "A" minibot.

Our Plan B should be a lot better.

[Joe Schornak]

Ours works. It stays on the robot through the match, deploys speedily, and climbs the pole quickly. We'll be tweaking the few remaining issues in coming days.

[orisenak]

>3 SECOND MINBOT!!!!!!!!
watch video with deployment+climb on this stream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVMd8sCR7gA

No FTC team, no extra money, no time, no minibot.

Though we did have an idea for a trap-launcher like arm that puts the minibot on the pole.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by Bruceb

We have one.
See it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvrbb9g9EHM

Hope I did that right.


Bruce

You may want to reference this answer in Q&A.


http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=16981

If your minibot is above the plane of the deployment line when it crosses the plane of the tower it is illegal.

[Alex270]

1987 has one. It doesn't work too bad (deploys and climbs in about 3.5-4.5 seconds). We may tweak the design a bit though to improve this.