How Would You Change Your Robot

[Canon reeves]

Now that Arial Assist is over, and people are preparing for offseason, what would you change about your robot's initial design, strategy, and etc.? What are some of the best strategies you have seen and how could they be improved upon?

[intensejaguar4]

I wish our robot didn't have to open the intake in order to shoot, that was our one weakness when trying to shoot.

[mlantry]

make a robot capable of doing a 3 ball autonomous...or even a 2 ball...

[TheKeeg]

Still sticking to the same strategy, I think we should have pivoted our intake from the bottom (as opposed to the 90 deg setup we have now). We had a lot of problems dealing with a dead zone and having the intake pivot from the bottom would have fixed that issue. Also, I think we should have looked into a wheeled shooter more than we did. It was obviously very successful (254) and should have been given more consideration by our team.

[Anthony Galea]

I would make our drive base wider. Although the 2013 Drive in a Day was convenient, 23.25" wide really hurt our intake options, (we were pretty much restricted to an el toro intake) and how we could hold the ball in (we had to use poles which really ended up hurting us in the end). The reason we went with the length that restricted the width was to get a better shot on our pneumatic shooter. I would honestly downgrade our drive train to 4 CIMs in order to prevent two things:
1) Teams that would see our drivetrain and say "You guys are playing defense" (although this may have been the reason we got to MSC)
2) The battery draw. There were a few matches where we would stutter about the field because we drew the battery charge to below 10 volts.

But hey, hindsight is 20/20

[Chris is me]

I could go on and on and on. I'll probably make a few posts on this topic, as the answer differs depending on the constraints (keeping the same robot design, starting from scratch, etc). I will say any designer that doesn't hate their robot by the end of the year is either really, really good at their job or... not so good at it. There is always something to improve.

If I had to start from scratch again, I would focus on the following attributes above all else:

• Floor Pickup that Kiss Passes
• HP Loadable
• Lob Shot (One Zone Truss / Front of Low Goal Score)

That's it. I would have no capacity for varying shot strength to shoot from range. The effort to reward ratio isn't worth it when those shots only matter in niche situations. The only exception might be a more linear shot for trussing to a human player. There are reasons to do more than this, but this is the best and simplest focus for 2791.

Numerous ways exist to accomplish this set of tasks - even from within the "arm/claw robot" paradigm we built in this year. I think the "best" way for us to have done this would have been to have built a 254-style backspin shooter with a fixed trajectory. Instead of two intakes and an articulating shooter back, I'd want one intake (in back?) and a pop-out lexan "chute" on the other side for simpler human loading. The way the Poofs did it performs better and meets their objectives better, but this approach drastically simplifies things which is better for our team.

The "claw" intake I believe can be made better than the best "bar" intake, but it turns out at the top level, intake performance was secondary to other factors leading to a quick cycle time. So as long as the performance dip wasn't massive (and it wasn't) a bar intake is the way to go to facilitate kiss passing.

More later, if anyone's interested and I still have homework to avoid.

[Mike Marandola]

We made the right choices for the most part. These areas could have been better:

-Faster winch motors/motor
-Faster intake (BAG motor on a VersaPlanetary would be better)
-Different frame (AM14U took too long to swap wheels)
-Different third stage ratio on VexPro ball shifter (we were really slow)

[Gregor]

Ability to quickly change out wheels quickly.

Ability to shoot with intake up.

Checkmate shooter (in front of low goal) for regionals, on the fly "line" shooter for championships. We had neither of those shooters.

More formulated strategy for regionals (i.e. drop ball in front of low goal, have parter push in, which we ran twice successfully at championships).

Mecanum wheels on intake.

6 cim drivetrain.

[z_beeblebrox]

Very little compared to the last two years:
-Two speed 6 CIM drive transmissions instead of 6 CIM single speed 15fps. We couldn't push without tripping the main breaker and even tripped it in aggressive driving. A low gear means we could push without stalling motors.

-More consistent, easy-to-replace catapult spring. We used stretched and tied surgical tubing which required frequent maintenance to maintain acceptable, let alone optimal trajectories. With a better material, we could have consistently had an extremely wide sweet spot.

[Ben Wolsieffer]

I think we should have focused on shooting rather than catching. Catching turned out not to be a major part of the game at the higher level, and we did not have the ability to shoot. But, as people have said, hindsight is 20/20.

For the offseason we are planning on making some changes though:

• Add more motors to our drivetrain (one extra miniCIM to each wheel)
• Possibly make our sweeper faster
• Add LEDs

[DevBal5012]

Originally Posted by mlantry

make a robot capable of doing a 3 ball autonomous...or even a 2 ball...

Or in our team's case, a one ball...

[Chris is me]

Keeping the same "claw on arm" design:

• Make starting config position of claw able to shoot in high goal from in front of low goal
• Move as much of the claw geometry inside the frame perimeter as possible
• Move punch's "fully cocked" location about 3 inches behind ball to allow it to accelerate
• Properly sized arm gearbox with 35 chain for final reduction

All of these are fairly obvious changes - strengthens the rotational joint, makes shooter more powerful without changing the design at all, gets claw out of harm's way, gives us the only important high goal shot in the game. Maybe there is some way for a few of these (the first one) to be implemented for IRI, if we get in.

[vladtheimpaled]

Scrap it and use the cheesey poof's design

[Whippet]

I would have added some way to forcefully eject the ball from our catching mechanism (e.g. not gravity-powered), preferably upward and into the high goal.

[mman1506]

Having a dedicated inbound/defense bot was reasonably competitive but not a lot of fun especially when paired with a weaker alliance.


PID for pickup actuation. It worked well in practice but it wasn't robust enough for competition.


Using a jvn style instead of a "drop down" intake.

A woven carbon fiber tube for a goalie bar instead of a pulltruded one that split along its grain.