FIRST Behind the Design Book 3.0 (plan)

[Jaxom]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

LED lights on the robot that responsive to the sounds in the stadium. They flash and turn colors with the beat of the music. The LED panels were custom made and utilized a feature of the CRio that is not used by many.

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

[s_forbes]

We used a manual mill and manual lathe to build most of the parts of our robot, as well as a water-jetting sponsor for important yet obscure parts (transmission plates/brackets, funny shaped gears). Lots and lots of iterative CAD modeling and packaging went into the design of our climbing mechanism, but that is a process that is not easy to document!

[Turtleinator]

Team 1816 The Green Machine in Curie has cool stuff for you to see!

Our robot this year utilizes, and won the rockwell automation inovation in control award for:
-3D printed "augers" (helixes) That hold and index frisbees when in a triangular pattern.
-Ornate water jetted baseplate for the frame of the shooter.
-Fully automated vision control system with point and shoot accuracy.
-Fully CAD-ed robot
-3D models with moving parts to show off the robot.

Come to our pit and any of our team members can give you more detailed information, or ask for Kevin. You can also look at our website www.edinarobotics.com for a picture of the robot.

[friskywombat]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

We use the DI/O ports of the sidecar, one each for red, green, and blue, and a custom circuit for the LEDs.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Jaxom

Could you share which CRio feature this is?

Here is the response from my programming mentor Joe H:


The implementation in San Antonio (Alamo) was using the cRIO's FPGA and RT processor to implement the Bling.

The FPGA was responsible for reading back buffers of timed audio data
using DMA from the analog input channel that had a microphone
connected.

The RT processor then performed DSP on the audio to identify the power of the Bass portion of the signal (128 Hz - 32 Hz). It also used some sinusoids to slowly sweep between target colors.

Once the color was chosen for that time, the FPGA was told to change
the 3 (red, green, and blue) DIO PWM signals that were driving the 3
channels of the LED panels. The FPGA continues to generate this duty
cycle until the next color is chosen by RT.

The digital outputs have FET buffers on them to allow the PWM signal
to control the relatively high current LEDs.

Hope this helps,
-Joe

[wilsonmw04]

FIRST Team 1086: Blue Cheese would love to show you what our students have designed and built this year. You can find us in the Galileo Division.


A quick list of features:

-- Light weight "Legendairy" octocanum drive train. This earned us the Engineering Excellence Award at the Chesapeake Regional.

-- Innovative use of a double rocker arm four bar linkage.

-- Lightweight and durable sheet metal frame cut on water jet and powder coated.

-- Full student designed and created CAD model.

A quick animation that points out a few of the features.

[Mr V]

2046 Galileo

In house

CNC milling

3D printed parts (though not as many as intially planned to to design changes)

Done by a student at his employer/our sponsor

Water jetted polycarbonate

CNC milling

CNC lathe

We also have a laser cutter but no robot parts were made with it this year though we did use it to make buttons.

I'll second the sentiment that you must check out 1899's laser cut plywood robot, it's a thing of beauty.

[Siri]

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!

[Vince]

Thanks for the great suggestions and summary.

We are also be looking for control/sensor applications, as well as detailed CAD work (as well as any simulation, say for climbing or shooting mechanisms), so more leads in those areas will help as well.

We appreciate everyone's assistance finding case study leads.

[Coach Norm]

Originally Posted by Siri

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!

For 2468, I would add the string Potentiometer. It is probably better than the other items you list for us although the LEDs are a favorite of the students. We use the POT to adjust the angle of shooter deck as well as PID control on the shooter wheel using an optical sensor.

[kenavt]

Originally Posted by Coach Norm

For 2468, I would add the string Potentiometer. It is probably better than the other items you list for us although the LEDs are a favorite of the students. We use the POT to adjust the angle of shooter deck as well as PID control on the shooter wheel using an optical sensor.

I think this is a simple and effective sensor for arm and elevator applications. I know that we and 1718 have installed string pots as well, and this is 2337's second year doing so.

As for other interesting software features prevalent in FRC, the rise of using the cRIO's FTP server to send autonomous scripts that are read by the robot to quickly tune autos and then switch between them is a useful feature.

Plus, I know teams that are also using configuration files of robot constants (such as PID constants) that allow quick constants changing and, thus, tuning. It trumps having to rebuild and redeploy code every time something needs to be changed. We are utilizing both of these this year - I'd love to talk about these, or the string pot, at Championship this week.

[sanddrag]

Team 696 did some mathematical modeling of frisbee flight using Matlab if you're looking for something of the sort.

[ticoloco12]

Team 207 prides itself on it's manufacturing. We're an official chapter of SME (society of manufacturing engineers) and thanks to that and some serious hard work, we've been doing some really cool stuff. Every part on the robot that's not from the KOP is either machined or 3D printed in house by the kids. design work is pretty insane too. These kids use Solidoworks to high-end industry levels. We were a part of the first book and would love to be a part of the next. There is a whole team component dealing with documentation of our design process as well so we have some great stuff for you to see!

Keep the Hawthorne High School of Manufacturing and Engineering in mind! We won't be at nationals this year, but we are easy to reach...

[Navid Shafa]

1983 will be bringing pamphlets and paperwork in collaboration with our Water-jet sponsor OMAX.

Please stop by and grab the paperwork.

Talk to myself, or preferably ask for Liam in our pit.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by Siri

Current list, for reference:

Archimedes
20......manufacturing (waterjet, CNC & manual lathe, bridgeport, welding, broaching)
78......manufacturing (3D print, waterjet, CNC mill)
1902
2468....manufacturing (HDPE shooter) control (sound-responsive LEDs)
3310....manufacturing (CNC lathe, laser cut, CNC bender, CNC mill, TIG weld) and control (cRio-driven LEDs via Java, PIDs, limit switches & IR sensors)

Curie
359
1816....manufacturing (waterjet, 3D models with moving parts) and control (automated aiming)
2168

Galileo
222.....manufacturing (3D print)
125
842.....manufacturing (3D print, waterjet)
1086....manufacturing (octocanum, four bar, water jet & powder coat sheet metal)
2175....manufacturing (3D print, manual mill & lathe, laser cut, waterjet, CNC plasma cutter)

Newton
1640....manufacturing (polyurethane mold, laser cut, CNC & manual mill, manual lathe, MIG weld) and control (swerve code, prox sensors & limit switches, vision processing, driveable swerve display)
1741....control (shooter angle)
1899....manufacturing (plywood frame)

Not Attending
100?
696

Looks like I need to schedule myself more time off to look around!

That felt very cool to be included in that list...

For those of you that don't know the back story, here's the quick (ish) summary. All season, I and a mentor had been arguing that a robot that could climb and dump for 50 points every match, as well as score a few in autonomous, could win the vast majority of matches. We believed that we didn't need an intake to do well and even win Davis. I could go into what caused this strategy to fail, and why the rest of the team seemed to hate it, but I'll largely skip that part of the story. The essential part is, that after three weeks of fighting, we ran out of time, and shipped a robot that really hadn't been properly tested or iterated. Our robot as shipped looked big and gangely, and was totally designed around a 30 point climb.

Unfortunately, even with all the iterations we added on at Davis, it didn't work. Basically, the travel on the climber was shortened by about two inches because of a last minute gearbox redesign, and we couldn't climb. At Davis, we had a robot that drove around and even shot a few discs, but really wasn't very good. We didn't make eliminations for the first time in maybe six years of competition. It was a big blow to the team.

When I went off to visit schools for spring break, those who had been dissatisfied with the robot we played with at Davis decided to do something about it. They spend their entire winter break designing a short shooter that was to be put on in place of the enormous climber at competition. They built it at our shop and a local hackerspace. In the end, we had a short little bot that could shoot from the front and back of the pyramid, and hang for 10, and it looked awesome because of the black powdercoat.

When we got to SVR, we spent the morning taking off the climber, and putting on this new shooter (which they called Mark II). By the end of the day, it was working pretty well, and we even went out to a few practice matches to actually practice (whaddya know?). It shot extremely straight, almost like a laser, and hung pretty well too. We got our three point autonomous working well too.

Friday and Saturday, we had a blast. We finally had a competitive robot. After not scoring more than one or two frisbees a match at Davis, we were suddenly scoring three or even four rounds a match plus auto. We ended up going 7-3-0 and seeded 12th, and would have gone 8-2-0 and ranked 9th or so if a screw hadn't come loose during one of our first matches. Here's my favorite match by far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAMQ8mJdsLk. We ended up getting picked first by Pink, which was another amazing feeling.

It was a wild ride, and a testament to the powers of iteration. We also did some cool stuff with awesome tools like sheetmetal punches and breaks, waterjet machines, CNC mills, welders, lathes, 3D printers, rivit guns, powdercoating machines, and much much more. Everything but the sheetmetal was designed, made, and assembled by students. I could go into more detail, but it's getting late.

It would be an honor to be included in a 2013 Behind the Design book, and I really think we have an amazing story to tell. Consider it.