Best Intake

[ErvinI]

Using catapults, I'm going for 610's intake. At first I was skeptical of the need for an intake like theirs, but I've since seen plenty of robots stuff themselves using their own intake because it has to move out of the way, outside the frame perimeter, ready to be hit back inside the frame perimeter by a defending robot.

For linear punches, I'm going for 971. It can intake a ball in multiple scenarios, including a bouncing ball.

[tr6scott]

Check out 1718 top roller design, it is done really well. The top roller is spring loaded, and has about 4" of travel, to keep contact with the ball while controlling pressure on the roll, and the sides of the arm is made of some material that flexes and springs back into position.

It was a thing of ugly beauty.

We have 1x2 thick wall aluminum tube that has not broken, but we have cracked welds after each weekend.

1718 has the bend but don't break design, that just works better. Nice job Pi.

[Epsilon 5]

My team uses a top roller intake with two mechanum wheels to center the ball. It worked very well for us at Waterloo, although we had some issues with getting the arm height right. You can see it here. Sorry it is hard to see, it is the only video we have online right now.

[Abhishek R]

I thought Spectrum's (3847) El Toro was pretty effective, as well as 148's.

233's punch was very impressive, it didn't have anything to center it besides a Frisbee, and even when it was off center, it still shot accurately and consistently.

But there have been great bar roller intakes too, the ones that pop into my head are 33's and 254's. 1538 refined this even more to keep pressure and account for variable compressions of the competition balls with the sliding rollers.

Also, not sure what category they go into, but 610's articulated rollers are pretty cool.

I don't see the advantage of a non-roller or pinch setup over a well-built roller system, seems like added complexity for no real benefit.

[AlexC]

We are pretty proud of ours. Its fast and it remains in contact with the ball for fast low goal dumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IdCf6WS4oU

[TKM.368]

We made use of bevel gears so that we could have both top rollers and side rollers. This allowed us to glide over the ball from more than just one direction for pickup and was one of the reasons we were able to go 18-0-0 at the Hawaii Regional this past weekend. It also made it so that our second ball for our two ball auto could be put to the side to more easily touch our alliance partner's bot.

Haven't been able to upload Saturday matches, but here are our Friday ones.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...18#post1366218

[AustinSchuh]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

For a top roller claw to be effective, it needs some method of centering a ball. Many different ways to do this. Teams like 971 and 118 use the geometry of their claw structure to force the ball into the center of the claw as it enters.

Sorry Chris, but the geometry of our claw isn't what centers the ball. The bottom tusks spin, actively centering the ball. We have an acceptance range that is over 20" wide, wider than is possible with geometry alone. I have yet to see any other robot which spins the lower part of the claw (but I'll happily be corrected if someone else knows of one.)

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by tr6scott

Check out 1718 top roller design, it is done really well. The top roller is spring loaded, and has about 4" of travel, to keep contact with the ball while controlling pressure on the roll, and the sides of the arm is made of some material that flexes and springs back into position.

It was a thing of ugly beauty.

We have 1x2 thick wall aluminum tube that has not broken, but we have cracked welds after each weekend.

1718 has the bend but don't break design, that just works better. Nice job Pi.

Wow. Thanks for the props. Being complimented by the #1 Waterford seed with an incredible Autonomous is good for the ego!

The vertical arms are made from 1/4" expanded PVC for stiffness, with 1/8" lexan laminated to the outside. The foamed PVC give stiffness, and if(when) it cracks, the lexan allows us to keep playing. Team 16 the bomb squad's 2008 pickup inspired ours.

[Canon reeves]

Originally Posted by AustinSchuh

Sorry Chris, but the geometry of our claw isn't what centers the ball. The bottom tusks spin, actively centering the ball. We have an acceptance range that is over 20" wide, wider than is possible with geometry alone. I have yet to see any other robot which spins the lower part of the claw (but I'll happily be corrected if someone else knows of one.)

3927 has a claw with wheels on the top and bottom, they have a really fast intake as well. Team 16, and 4522 both have a very fast and reliable feeder. I haven't seen any el toro style intakes that are as fast and easy to load as the horizontal beater bar or claw, but I haven't seen all of the robots so one probably exists.

[JamesCH95]

I would humbly submit 95's 'carwash intake' for your consideration in this thread. Our 2014 over-the-bumper design is an evolution of our 2012 over-the-bumper intake.

The key features are shaping the arms at a radius slightly larger than the ball so that the robot can turn sideways onto a ball and collect it instead of knocking it away. The cut-out also allows us to pick up the ball completely off-center, making our effective pickup width a little bit wider than the 29in width of our robot. Using drawer liner as the 'carwash flaps' allows us to have a very high linear speed on the OD of the intake, but will collapse down and allow us to effectively (but not overly) pinch a large variance in ball OD. When the roller starts to pinch the ball and load up/collapse, the smaller OD gives the intake more torque with which to pull the ball in/out. They are also very easy to package because the flaps collapse down, and it is very easy to pass the ball from one side's intake to the other. Being collapsible also means that they are very damage tolerant. Along those lines the whole intake was deployed with relatively low-force cylinders which allows a defender (or a wall, or a low goal) to push the intake back into our robot without damaging either us or the defender.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/supato...57643219020225

[ice.berg]

2481 gets my vote. In Wisconsin they dominated the field with their intake combined with the swerve. The 270 deg. design coupled with the 4 bar linkage is simply the best that I have seen this year (and also unique)

[JustPlyZ]

I've seen many intakes through out two competitions so far.

During Palmetto, there were bots that had good and bad intakes but, I believe 3571 (my team) had one of the best there, I dont want to sound cocky, but many teams came to us telling us about it (Facts)

During NorthBay though, everything was a lot different there were different types of intakes and the one that really caught my eye was 610. I love how they used those rollers for everything and it wasnt in their way when they were shooting. It was really well engineered. Also 1114 used the same kind of intake like they used for their 2007 bot I believe. It was quite unique and it worked well for them. Sad to see they lost at GT-W due to that one Penalty.

Our youtube has few videos of our bot, many more will be posted!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxE...H66XXMv670HMkA

-3571 Operator
@FRC3571

[LeelandS]

As with every year, there is no way to determine a "best" design. Hundreds of teams with the same style of design will have hundreds of different results. It's all about implementation of the design and how well it works with the rest of the features on the robot.

For example, 1405 used the traditional roller-bar intake. It's probably the most common one for this game, so how can it be any better or worse than any other? We iterated several variables in the design over the 6 week build season, as well as post-bag with a practice bot, until we found what we believed to optimize the intake. Coupling the design we set on to work best with out mecanum drive base, our intake fit our robot very well and was easily the best feature of our robot. It was at least good enough that Team 20 awarded us with the "Black Hole Award" for "A Collector that Game Pieces Gravitate Towards." Was it the best intake at FLR? Eh. But I'm, personally, very proud of it.

If you try and rank designs from "worst" to "best" you'll always find anomalies, such as a powerhouse team using a design you thought was "worst" and dominating regionals, or lower-tier teams using the "best" design and being unable to intake a ball their entire competition.

Throughout the season, I've seen amazing claw intakes, roller intakes, "toro's" and grabbers, and I've seen useless claw intakes, roller intakes, toro's and grabbers. It's less about the design, more about the process.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by LeelandS

Throughout the season, I've seen amazing claw intakes, roller intakes, "toro's" and grabbers, and I've seen useless claw intakes, roller intakes, toro's and grabbers. It's less about the design, more about the process.

I like this post a lot, if anyone wants to see what the process can look like. See our blog post about our intake.

[Ryan Dognaux]

461's intake was one of my favorites this year - http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/39939 Used 3 rollers connected to one another via bevel gears and it was very effective.