Team 2980 2013 Open Source Robot

[eedoga]

So the voting bit...

It is really a way to take what we build out of the hands of the kids so that it isn't a popularity contest. We act as though the community is our client, or as our board, who has commissioned us to design and build a robot for a competition. The community, and now Boeing are the ones who are footing the bill after all. The kids present to their client in such a way that the client can make an informed decision about the product being presented.

I think of the kids as thinkers and tinkers...The thinkers tend to dominate things like the design process, while some of the tinkers have really good ideas that they just can't put out into the world in such a way that they are easily understood. In smaller groups those ideas that would get lost are often able to see light...(the big trees are sparser making room for the small trees to grow...) The team also has a bias towards listening to a thinker over a tinker...The things a thinker says have more weight, while they may not have more value...When the community walks in, they have little to know idea which is which. The community assumes all of the kids are thinkers, just because they are in a club where we build robots and do math and physics and stuff...So to the community each group has equal value, and it is just the strength of their ideas that matters.

While this hasn't always led to the best robot, it has prevented hurt feelings...and I would argue it has led to the best robot we as a team are capable of thinking of at the time. The community tends to want to see our team stretch both mentally and physically, so they usually don't pick easy designs, or designs that seam like cop outs. Also once the community decides it is a lot easier to bring the team back together because no one feels left out of the design process. We didn't not choose team A's design, the community did, and we can all stand by that impartial judge a bit more easily.

In the end it really comes down to ability to present ideas in a way that makes sense to people who may or may not understand any of what you are talking about.

I hope this response makes sense in the way that I intended it to.

Edoga

[seabass94]

just know that with dumping the discs into the pyramid goal that only the alliance colored (red/blue) discs count for points

[eedoga]

Yeah...the climber plan has a really simple drive train for getting to the loading slots, and then back to the tower...or at least that is the idea.

Edoga

[eedoga]

So I've been yelled at by my team for not keeping this thread up. We are now half way through week two and our team has been designing like crazy. We are trying to solve ALL of the problems BEFORE we start building. I am especially excited about how much we have grown as a team. The students are working hard, and learning Autodesk Inventor under tremendous pressure. We are also learning how things fit together so we should SAVE money this year!

The team spent week one divided into 4 design teams. Each team came up with their own design which we presented to our community partners. (We are partnered with the NAVY, and we also have a number of community members who help us out.) After seeing the presentations the community voted.

Below are descriptions of the different designs and what the community thought of each.


C.L.U.E.
(Coolest Launching Unit Ever)

Description

This robot was designed primarily as a shooter to fire Frisbees in the goal as well as hang from the first level of the pyramid. It was designed to be short enough to aim from underneath the pyramid for an optimal firing angle; however, it can fire from anywhere on the field. Its only defensive ability is to evade other robots. Teflon was used to decrease friction resistance in the Frisbee shooter. Mecanum wheels would be used for optimal movement. All materials would be cut out using laser cutters.

What went wrong?
The main issue with the design was it attempt to do too much at once. The sponsors were concerned about the various moving parts of the shooter. Height was also an issue, as the other robots could easily block ours.


Stormtrooper

Description

The robot was designed as both a climber and a shooter. During the autonomous period, it will use computer vision to file 3 pre-loaded disks at the 3 point zone. During the teleoperated period, the drivers will follow a rehearsed path through the field. It would have a capacity for 4 disks and will include a 360-degree horizontal swivel. The design is a tested and simple design with a highly maneuverable drive train and allows good mobility.

What went wrong?

The designs were not chosen because the presentation of the design was poor. The design was also deemed to similar to others. (taken directly from the internet with little modification)

Agent 2980

Description

This design is a 90 degree launcher with a pneumatic wheel at the center to launch the discs rapidly and precisely with a manually fed queue hopper that pushes the Frisbees into the shooter with a piston. Agent 2980 also has a four wheel drive to insure accurate launching capabilities. Agent 2980 would be able to successfully launch and score points in every game. It can also evade other robots. Thanks to the basic design of the robot, more time can be devoted to troubleshooting and perfecting the system.

What went wrong?

The robot is unable to climb the pyramid, and cannot pick up Frisbees off the ground, forcing the players to feed the robot often

Agent M

Description

This humanoid robot runs around the arena throwing disks through the top slot just like any human player would. It is controlled using a kinect skeletal motion capture just like the robot in REAL STEELE! At the end of the match it climbs up the pyramid like a monkey and dunks four disks in the top scoring zone all while singing the national anthem!

Bumpers! We don't need no stinking bumpers...This robot carries a big stick to swat the competition!

Did we mention IT CLIMBS LIKE A MONKEY!







(Just Kidding!)





Description

Agent M is made to climb the entire pyramid. Unlike the other designs, this is not a shooter, but rather an extended arm that dumps buckets of Frisbees in to the goals. The protocol is to climb up the 3 levels of the pyramid, and dump all 4 allowed Frisbees into the 5 point box, guaranteeing 50 points.

Why it was picked

While it not a long range scoring mechanism, this robot was chosen because it offers the most efficient path to 50 points. The community especially liked how daring the design was.

(My students wrote the above descriptions with the exception of the bit about the humanoid...I through that in for fun. :-)

I am sure we will see all of the above ideas at the Microsoft Seattle Regional!

Can't wait to see it all come to life!

Edoga

[eedoga]

Major Problems being worked out...

So our goal with Agent M was to drive up the pole...This would be hard enough, if the pole was just a straight shot, but with those stupid rails in the way...

Our original thoughts were that by using these weird "tri-wheels" we could drive up the pole, and when one of the small the wheels met an obstacle the entire wheel would simply flip over driving over the problem areas on the pyramid...


In the original design had four of these wheels mounted at 90 degrees, so that the wheels would sort of cup the pole as the robot drove up. The idea was that the robot would flip the wheels as it went over the horizontal bars robots can hang from.

We realized that as the wheels rotated around they would do two things...First the wheels would crash into each other and bind. Our next solution to that problem was to switch to three wheels, and off set them so that only one wheel would be flipping over at any given time. Here again we ran into trouble. As the wheels flip over the longer leg moves down into the center position. This would push the robot side ways instead of up and over. When the robot came back down it would no longer be lined up with the pole which would result in an expensive fall!

We were seriously close to giving up on the plan all together and starting over when we noticed an old robot I made a number of years ago that had a suspension system. I keep it up on top of a cabinet where I am sure it will fall off and crush me some day. :-)

In any case after reviewing how it works we came up with the plan of mounting the tri-wheel assembly's on springs. It is our hope that when the wheels encounter the barrier and begin to rotate around, as they lift up the springs will absorb the travel smoothing out the robots ascent and maintaining the wheels contact with the pyramid at all times.



The shock mounts give the triwheels 3 inches of travel. Of course we are banking on a whole lot of things working together...We can only hope that things will work the way we expect them to. If not...I guess we can dump disks in the 1 point slot.

(It will work...It will work...It will work...Our new team mantra)

Finally today we worked on making the shocks smaller. Garret and Mr. McGinnis managed to shave about three inches off of them which will give us much more room for electronics. We have to work hard to keep as much of the weight possible low and forward which means this robot isn't going to handle very while it is on the ground.

Maybe we should rename it SLOTH. :-p

I'm sure we will run into more problems as we continue on with this design and build. Here is to it all coming together in the end.

Edoga

[Donut]

Just a friendly reminder that you will need 8" of bumper on each side of the triangle cut out to fit the pyramid. The model makes it look like it is okay but I can't see the dimension to be sure.

You'll have to let us know how the chassis holds up over the season. The climbing design we've been tossing around involves a similar cut out to fit the pyramid inside it, but I'm concerned about building a rigid enough chassis that would hold up if we stick it in the middle of our chassis like that. If we do end up building a climber I think it is more likely that the mechanism will be mounted on top of our robot and we'll flip over to climb.

[eedoga]

Originally Posted by Donut

Just a friendly reminder that you will need 8" of bumper on each side of the triangle cut out to fit the pyramid. The model makes it look like it is okay but I can't see the dimension to be sure.

So the robot is really wide, 30 inches, and 24 inches long. We plan on skinning it with polycarb at least on the sides, or atleast that was the plan as of a few days ago. We should be publishing all of our CAD files over the weekend. The frame mouns on the front and back are 8 inches long. :-) We will hopefully have our final final final drawings by the end of today to post and share! We have 1 or 2 more major problems to overcome first though.

Edoga

[Jibri Wright]

Originally Posted by eedoga

Major Problems being worked out...

So our goal with Agent M was to drive up the pole...This would be hard enough, if the pole was just a straight shot, but with those stupid rails in the way...

Our original thoughts were that by using these weird "tri-wheels" we could drive up the pole, and when one of the small the wheels met an obstacle the entire wheel would simply flip over driving over the problem areas on the pyramid...


In the original design had four of these wheels mounted at 90 degrees, so that the wheels would sort of cup the pole as the robot drove up. The idea was that the robot would flip the wheels as it went over the horizontal bars robots can hang from.

We realized that as the wheels rotated around they would do two things...First the wheels would crash into each other and bind. Our next solution to that problem was to switch to three wheels, and off set them so that only one wheel would be flipping over at any given time. Here again we ran into trouble. As the wheels flip over the longer leg moves down into the center position. This would push the robot side ways instead of up and over. When the robot came back down it would no longer be lined up with the pole which would result in an expensive fall!

We were seriously close to giving up on the plan all together and starting over when we noticed an old robot I made a number of years ago that had a suspension system. I keep it up on top of a cabinet where I am sure it will fall off and crush me some day. :-)

In any case after reviewing how it works we came up with the plan of mounting the tri-wheel assembly's on springs. It is our hope that when the wheels encounter the barrier and begin to rotate around, as they lift up the springs will absorb the travel smoothing out the robots ascent and maintaining the wheels contact with the pyramid at all times.



The shock mounts give the triwheels 3 inches of travel. Of course we are banking on a whole lot of things working together...We can only hope that things will work the way we expect them to. If not...I guess we can dump disks in the 1 point slot.

(It will work...It will work...It will work...Our new team mantra)

Finally today we worked on making the shocks smaller. Garret and Mr. McGinnis managed to shave about three inches off of them which will give us much more room for electronics. We have to work hard to keep as much of the weight possible low and forward which means this robot isn't going to handle very while it is on the ground.

Maybe we should rename it SLOTH. :-p

I'm sure we will run into more problems as we continue on with this design and build. Here is to it all coming together in the end.

Edoga

You know that system your robot uses to climb? Maybe if you mounted that vertical on the robot and put it to the back or front of the robot, you would have room for a shooter.

[eedoga]

Originally Posted by Jibri Wright

You know that system your robot uses to climb? Maybe if you mounted that vertical on the robot and put it to the back or front of the robot, you would have room for a shooter.

At this point I think we would run up against a few things. First of all is weight. This robot is small, but dense. I am not sure we could fit anything else in and be under the weight limit. Each tri-wheel without the three chains inside weighs 6.2 pounds...So we are probably over 30 pounds for that climbing mechanism. even if we had the weight capacity adding a light weight shooter would probably be mostly ineffective.

We are also running up against time. We currently have not tested our robot climbing up a pyramid. We hope to see it climb later this week. We could develop a light weight shooter as our with holding allowance, but I have a feeling we are going to be modifying our climber during that time.

There is also the time available during a match. We aren't sure how quickly our robot will climb the pole. We probably won't have time for taking shots. Our current plan is to try to dump in the lowest slot during autonomous and then make a bee line for the half way mark so that we can load up the top dumper with the colored disks and get back to climbing.

Hope this clears things up.

Edoga

[Jibri Wright]

Originally Posted by eedoga

At this point I think we would run up against a few things. First of all is weight. This robot is small, but dense. I am not sure we could fit anything else in and be under the weight limit. Each tri-wheel without the three chains inside weighs 6.2 pounds...So we are probably over 30 pounds for that climbing mechanism. even if we had the weight capacity adding a light weight shooter would probably be mostly ineffective.

We are also running up against time. We currently have not tested our robot climbing up a pyramid. We hope to see it climb later this week. We could develop a light weight shooter as our with holding allowance, but I have a feeling we are going to be modifying our climber during that time.

There is also the time available during a match. We aren't sure how quickly our robot will climb the pole. We probably won't have time for taking shots. Our current plan is to try to dump in the lowest slot during autonomous and then make a bee line for the half way mark so that we can load up the top dumper with the colored disks and get back to climbing.

Hope this clears things up.

Edoga

Ya I guess that's like a week worth of late nights by now. If I read this thread earlier, I probably would of posted the idea sooner, sorry about that.

[eedoga]

Originally Posted by Jibri Wright

Ya I guess that's like a week worth of late nights by now. If I read this thread earlier, I probably would of posted the idea sooner, sorry about that.

No worries,

Conversations like this one are why we post everything we can. By being open we get input we would not otherwise get. I personally hope more teams share in the future. in essence we are crowd sourcing our development and design process, and remember the knowledge is cumulative. We now have two or three years worth of advice behind our team.

So back to the idea of shooting and climbing,

We have our community vote on which robot we should build. The community really wanted us to focus on doing one thing well this year and decided a climbing robot was our best shot for this years competition. The community gets to hold us accountable a week from tomorrow so hopefully we won't dissapoint them!

Edoga

[eedoga]

In the name of being as open with our failures as we are with our successes...

The design as it currently stands does not work. There is too much flexibility in some places, and not enough in others. The system doesn't move the way we expected it to, nor does it react the way we wanted/thought it would.

Also, it is too heavy...

I am sure there is a team out there that could make it work, just not this team given the resources we currently have. So, we are back to the drawing boards, only we don't have 6 weeks...We have 4 days.

We still plan on climbing. We hope to get something working before bag day, but more likely we will be designing our climber using our withholding allowance and assembling it on the first day at competition, something we had hoped to avoid. The good news is that we have access to a tower at our neighboring team and we know what we need to know in order to make something work...We just hoped to have something working before now.

I am trying to keep the kids happy and feeling good. We did take on this incredible challenge in order to grow as a team and as individuals...

We will post revised plans as we make them.

Edoga

[eedoga]

Hello, everyone. Updates on the robot will be coming soon, but for now I'd like to take a moment to post links to our awards essays for this year. Our team submitted to the Chairman's, Entrepreneurship and Woodie Flowers Award this year.

Chairman's
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0mN...it?usp=sharing

Entrepreneurship
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0mN...it?usp=sharing

Woodie Flowers
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0mN...it?usp=sharing

[eedoga]

So the design for the new pole climber based on the prototype we developed is finally about done. Inventor says it will weigh 28.55 pounds. which is pushing the 30 pound limit, but not breaking it, so I'm pretty happy. We are really hoping that Bowman Manufacturing, our material sponsor has 2 parts left in it. We are really hoping to have this design really work for us so turning our current 0 point robot into a 50 pointer.

We still have to work out the hook system which currently looks like it will involve spring mounted cutouts that will slip past the cross bars as the robot pulls itself up the pyramid's corner pole.



Here is an image of the metal drawer box. It has mounting holes for the polycarb slides we hope to mount along the bottom rail, and adjustable holes for mounting it in the robot at the competition. There is talk of mounting the drawer system on a bearing so that it can tilt. There are holes for that also. We are especially happy with the fact that making this out of aluminum means we get to "bring the sexy back". :-)

Personally I hope the spring based hook system will be flexible enough that the climber will be able to climb regardless.

Edoga