[Ri3D] Team Indiana Powered By AndyMark (And Corn)

[Logan Byers]

On behalf of Team Indiana, we are proud to present our Robot in 3 Days! Hope you enjoy the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mf662yER3c

Also, follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional information (Q&A sessions, documentation, explanations, and more):
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ri3dindiana
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ri3DIndiana

[lynca]

Great video and great looking robot !

Will you be releasing any details about the design ?

Thank you for showcasing a passive intake on your robot, really simple and reliable (less moving parts to break ! )
I like how the cutout in the frame auto-aligns totes when dropping down the next tote.

[Mr V]

Love the drop and lock mechanism for grabbing the totes. Good work guys, see you in St Louis.

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by lynca

Great video and great looking robot !

Will you be releasing any details about the design ?

Thank you for showcasing a passive intake on your robot, really simple and reliable (less moving parts to break ! )
I like how the cutout in the frame auto-aligns totes when dropping down the next tote.

The intake was a big deviation in our design process as Danny spoke about extensively in one of the videos during the build. We'd initially intended on using an intake mechanism to bring totes into the robot so that we could avoid having to modify the form factor of the drive base. At the point we discovered a separate mechanism would be required to score the totes it was decided that we should change direction as the value added from those two mechanisms would have been very low. There are a couple interesting lessons that come from that decision that teams can take away.

1.) Are we adding complexity to fix a shortcoming of another mechanism? If so maybe we should re-evaluate that original mechanism. (The 2007 season when I was a student on 1741 comes to mind.)

2.) You can (and should) take time to evaluate your design. If a drastic direction change is required, then you should take it. Sticking with a design just for the sake of sticking with a design is often ill advised.

We had intended on adding another passive feature to improve alignment, but due to some delays in getting the lift build and running we couldn't implement them. It is possible, as the design sits, to have a tote improperly aligned. In this case a small amount of rotation is required to correct the situation, but all in all a misalignment doesn't eat up much time.

I believe at current our plan is to release 3Dpdf files of the CAD by the end of the day. As far as questions about components, Danny details those well in the video.

[PurpleInk]

I was so excited to finally be able to share this with everyone! Thanks for the positive comments, everyone

[ratdude747]

Looks nice, good concept that I can see teams refining into some pretty slick robots.

Yay Indiana.

[DiehardCybercard]

Hey friends with robots.

This CAD is model that we created during robot in 3 days. It is missing some of the features that were in the final design seen in the reveal video. We still wanted to provide this so you all can take a better look at the details we do have.

Right Click Save-As

[jds2001]

Can you provide the original files, in whatever format you desire? I'd like to get a bit of a closer look at the elevator mechanism if that's possible.

[DiehardCybercard]

Originally Posted by jds200

Can you provide the original files, in whatever format you desire? I'd like to get a bit of a closer look at the elevator mechanism if that's possible.

Sorry Jon, I'm gonna have to decline your request on that . I don't know if all the teams are this way but we don't want to release measurements. We want our Ri3D effort to be an inspiration and a spring board. We wish for teams to improve upon what we've done. With that in mind we had decided not to release measurements so the basic concept cannot be copied. Sorry to let you down on that front. I can see if the engineering team can get a closer view of what we do have, however. (I do recall the view we have ins't very near the lift).

[jds2001]

Originally Posted by DiehardCybercard

Sorry to let you down on that front. I can see if the engineering team can get a closer view of what we do have, however. (I do recall the view we have ins't very near the lift).

This makes a lot of sense Brett. Mainly what I was planning on doing is hiding the totes at the front, and getting a bit better view of what's going on with the lift assembly (if there's a video you can point me to even that would be great). I certainly wasn't planning on wholesale copying the design!

[DiehardCybercard]

Originally Posted by jds200

This makes a lot of sense Brett. Mainly what I was planning on doing is hiding the totes at the front, and getting a bit better view of what's going on with the lift assembly (if there's a video you can point me to even that would be great). I certainly wasn't planning on wholesale copying the design!

I've got a bug in the engineer's ear. If he gets a moment to send that to me later Ill put it up. The only video we really have of the lift is the reveal video, unfortunately.

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by jds200

This makes a lot of sense Brett. Mainly what I was planning on doing is hiding the totes at the front, and getting a bit better view of what's going on with the lift assembly (if there's a video you can point me to even that would be great). I certainly wasn't planning on wholesale copying the design!

We'd certainly have no problems answering questions you might have about the mechanism. Just leave them here and we'll field them as we are able.

[Mr. B]

At the end of the video, the arms lift a can into position. Is the robot as shown able to pick up both totes and cans. Does the lexan offset pieces allow the arms to go over the can or how does the robot get the can
Thanks

[BoilerMentor]

Originally Posted by Mr. B

At the end of the video, the arms lift a can into position. Is the robot as shown able to pick up both totes and cans. Does the lexan offset pieces allow the arms to go over the can or how does the robot get the can
Thanks

This falls squarely into the realm of happy coincidence. The morning of the last day (after we'd been in the shop all night) I said, "Huh, I wonder...." The gripper as configured could pick up totes if given a solid surface to press them against. The forks would flex slightly apart and it wasn't pretty, but I'm sure it could be optimized to work for both game pieces. The basis of the effect was the limited lateral support of the forks and the fact that they were spaced further apart already to allow clearance for the totes.

[PurpleInk]

Originally Posted by BoilerMentor

This falls squarely into the realm of happy coincidence. The morning of the last day (after we'd been in the shop all night) I said, "Huh, I wonder...." The gripper as configured could pick up totes if given a solid surface to press them against. The forks would flex slightly apart and it wasn't pretty, but I'm sure it could be optimized to work for both game pieces. The basis of the effect was the limited lateral support of the forks and the fact that they were spaced further apart already to allow clearance for the totes.

He misspoke. The gripper as designed picks up the totes anywhere on the field. We discovered that the gripper could pick up the recycling containers if we pushed them against a solid surface such as the wall.

This twitter post is a little bit of a better view and you can see how it holds the can.