The Robonauts 118 - 2013 Video

[tzjin]

Beautiful job. Not sure what's gotten into everyone here, but you've succeeded in inspiring me to make our robot even better. I look forward to Lone Star and SVR!

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Cory

See you guys at SVR. Should be one of (if not the best) events of the year.

Definitely one of THE events to watch this season. I'm stoked!

[DampRobot]

Could you please allow the video to be viewed via mobile?

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

That's definitely an awesome bot. Minibotting up the corner and doing the clamp airlock maneuver around the knuckle came up in our brainstorming, but we nixed it as too complicated to pull off. Clearly that's not the case for everyone.

So I'm seeing stock in tall-ish nimble defenders going up at LSR this year...

Building a tall mecanum robot has never felt like a better decision than it does riiiiiight now.

Super excited to compete against (or, preferably, with) 118 at Lone Star! We've got a pit about thirty feet away from you.. looks like we picked a great "learning" regional to attend! (Man, I'm drooling at the prospect of just seeing this thing...)

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

Will you be releasing any more in-depth information on your beautiful machine this year? I'm sure we can all learn something from 118.

There are a lot of things that you can tell from the video (like the mounting points for a third CIM in their drive gearboxes). I get the feeling that those gearboxes sitting right next to the climbing wheel might be using PTO.

The 'feet' are most likely powered by some sort of worm gear, which has the added bonus of not back-driving. Can't tell exactly what motor that is, maybe a 775?

I honestly have no clue how they are able to get discs up to the shooter from their pickup, though. From what I can tell, the 'core' of the robot is electronics and I couldn't see anything much going on in there. Although, 0:10 you can see what I think is a disc queued up, right in the middle of the robot. Also, from the shots of them shooting, it looks like there is some sort of 'bucket' holding the discs that gets raised up to the shooter.

Mini-CIM on the shooter wheel, which seems to be a curved design of unknown arc-length. I saw another motor (550?) in a gearbox sticking up behind that, probably helping feed in discs.

Their drive wheels are the same custom molded urethane they used last year. Pretty neat process, lets them make a whole lot of them and colour them the way they like. Pretty grippy too.

At 0:47 a wild Talon appears.

[fox46]

I got nothing.... except for maybe some lead blocks and smaller pinion sprockets to try and keep that thing away from the feeder stations

Wicked cool!

[S2K JDM]

gg wp

[HayWire1569]

Can't view the video on mobile :/

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by TheMadCADer

There are a lot of things that you can tell from the video (like the mounting points for a third CIM in their drive gearboxes). I get the feeling that those gearboxes sitting right next to the climbing wheel might be using PTO.

The 'feet' are most likely powered by some sort of worm gear, which has the added bonus of not back-driving. Can't tell exactly what motor that is, maybe a 775?

I honestly have no clue how they are able to get discs up to the shooter from their pickup, though. From what I can tell, the 'core' of the robot is electronics and I couldn't see anything much going on in there. Although, 0:10 you can see what I think is a disc queued up, right in the middle of the robot. Also, from the shots of them shooting, it looks like there is some sort of 'bucket' holding the discs that gets raised up to the shooter.

Mini-CIM on the shooter wheel, which seems to be a curved design of unknown arc-length. I saw another motor (550?) in a gearbox sticking up behind that, probably helping feed in discs.

Their drive wheels are the same custom molded urethane they used last year. Pretty neat process, lets them make a whole lot of them and colour them the way they like. Pretty grippy too.

At 0:47 a wild Talon appears.

You can also see gold (anodized?) versaplanetary gearboxes for their indexer/feeder 550 and their human feeder roller motor. I'm very interested in how they stack from their ground pickup. The aerial shot shows an empty bucket style hopper but no details of how discs go in or come out. The bucket lowers for floor collection and raises up to shoot and human load. I can't tell if they are pushing in from the bottom or top. But they pull from the bottom of the stack it looks like.

It's just amazing 13+ actuations and I'm pretty sure I missed some.

Also Justin, after watching this video 10+ times this is one of your best yet. Great job.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

You can also see gold (anodized?) versaplanetary gearboxes for their indexer/feeder 550 and their human feeder roller motor. I'm very interested in how they stack from their ground pickup. The aerial shot shows an empty bucket style hopper but no details of how discs go in or come out. The bucket lowers for floor collection and raises up to shoot and human load. I can't tell if they are pushing in from the bottom or top or pulling out of the bottom or top.

It's just amazing 13+ actuations and I'm pretty sure I missed some.

Discs go in. Discs come out. We can't explain that.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by TheMadCADer

Discs go in. Discs come out. We can't explain that.

I have two guesses

1. They stack like we do, power a disc under a partially supported stack. It works very well for us and seems like the most space efficient.

2. They drop the tube low enough to drop them in from the top. Keeps things consistent with your human feed system but since you have to have an opening at the front bottom to shoot from, I am leaning to theory one

[TheMadCADer]

Another thing I've been thinking about now that I've watched the climbing segment a few times is how they might score a few coloured discs from up there. Ever throw a frisbee at a steep angle and have it come right back to you, or even land behind you?

[StAxis]

Originally Posted by TheMadCADer

Another thing I've been thinking about now that I've watched the climbing segment a few times is how they might score a few coloured discs from up there. Ever throw a frisbee at a steep angle and have it come right back to you, or even land behind you?

I would expect that they are planing on trying to get those from the ground, they have the angle mechanism and clearly a good ability for accuracy. Plus there was already a red disc in the pyramid when they climbed. I know most people have discounted getting them from the floor, but I think tonight we've all learned, don't discount anything just yet.

[nicholsjj]

If you look at around 1:40 you can see a bucket/turntable device that I would guess "spins" the frisbees into their shooter. Apex is the very definition of what my "dream" robot was this year. 118 was able to shoot full court, pickup from the floor, vary their shooting angle, and climb the corner. You can add on top of all that what looked like a multi-speed transmission and I think they achieved a great robot.

[TheMadCADer]

Originally Posted by StAxis

I would expect that they are planing on trying to get those from the ground, they have the angle mechanism and clearly a good ability for accuracy. Plus there was already a red disc in the pyramid when they climbed. I know most people have discounted getting them from the floor, but I think tonight we've all learned, don't discount anything just yet.

Well, I don't reasonably expect them to try that as a viable strategy, but it would be neat to try. It would rely too much on the discs behaving the same way aerodynamically every time, which won't happen.

I think the problem with the pyramid goal is how perfect the GDC wants the discs to be in that goal, based on the Q&A about what counts in there. I know dumper teams have had issues with stacking, and I think a shooter would have consistency issues. Just from their video, it looks like there's a pretty wide range that they hit within, and I think it's a bit wider than the window for the pyramid goal. Probably why there was just one disc in there.