What is your teams (general) robot design? (2015)

[earlybird]

Why put the bin on top of the tote when you can put the totes under the bin? That is basically the motto our team is rolling with.

[MrForbes]

It's going to be really fun watching all these different robots do their thing this year!

[Donut]

Originally Posted by earlybird

Why put the bin on top of the tote when you can put the totes under the bin? That is basically the motto our team is rolling with.

This. We're going to see an interesting mix of towering 6 foot high stack cappers and short stocky bots that try to bench press the stack of totes.

[TheThings]

Originally Posted by Donut

This. We're going to see an interesting mix of towering 6 foot high stack cappers and short stocky bots that try to bench press the stack of totes.

My team is hoping to find a happy medium of lifting three at a time and making stacks of six that ways.

[kuraikou]

We plan on having a elevator system with hooks on it that can pick up multiple totes (5 or 6) and hold them and then put them down again on the scoring platform, there would also be an arm on the other side of the elevator that can pick up cans and put them on top of the stack. check out our engineering journal here

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by TheThings

My team is hoping to find a happy medium of lifting three at a time and making stacks of six that ways.

Moderation is for monks ;->

Seriously, we're building tall so we can build a stack of 6 in the landfill or at the loading station and make one run to the platform, but if we do have a problem with the heavy load, "three at a time" is the primary fallback strategy. Actually, our current RC thoughts are to make a stack of five totes, move it to the platform, then get a noodle in an RC, put it atop one tote, and lift that one tote into place.

[Landonh12]

I like our chances this year. We are trying things that we have never done before, design and strategy wise. We've always stuck to one type of design/strategy because we knew that it worked and that we could do it successfully. We are kind of straying away from that and trying to perform at a higher level, or should I say a more "creative" level that could potentially lead us to go big or go home.

[BOCsouthpaw]

We are going to put a giant solder iron on the robot and melt a hole in the totes and pick them up that way.

[75vs1885]

1885 is going to teleport totes into stacks....EINSTEIN HERE WE COME

[dchartley]

Originally Posted by kuraikou

We plan on having a elevator system with hooks on it that can pick up multiple totes (5 or 6) and hold them and then put them down again on the scoring platform, there would also be an arm on the other side of the elevator that can pick up cans and put them on top of the stack. check out our engineering journal here

Thanks for the info. Some of the other posts here are trying to be humorous but are not helpful and are cluttering up an otherwise informative thread. I'm mentoring a low to medium level team with only 1 or 2 other adults helping and we can use all the ideas we can get.

Doug

[MrForbes]

It seems that most teams have the attitude that they have invented the greatest thing since sliced bread, and don't want to give away their secrets. OTOH, we learned long ago that posting info about our design early on has two big advantages: 1. If we messed up and are pursuing a lousy idea, folks here will quickly set us straight and help us find a better way to do it. 2. We might help some other teams that are struggling.

YMMV. It's worked for us for almost a decade.

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

It seems that most teams have the attitude that they have invented the Average thing since sliced bread, and don't want to give away their secrets. OTOH, we learned long ago that posting info about our design early on has two big advantages: 1. If we messed up and are pursuing a lousy idea, folks here will quickly set us straight and help us find a better way to do it. 2. We might help some other teams that are struggling.

YMMV. It's worked for us for almost a decade.

In that spirit, here's where we are:

Perplexed.

We are constructing both a 4-wheel skid steer (rear omni) and a mecanum drive. We hope they will both be functional by the weekend, though making a carbon fiber belly pan for each is becoming quite the task. We have tested both types on practice bots and each have their advantages and disadvantages. They are sized precisely the same, so we can install the superstructure on either.

Which leads to the next problem. We have spent more time on strategy and design this year than ever before, which is good, but we still feel like there is a broken strategy that we are missing. We are building a cascade elevator with either two or three "teeth" that can grab under the lip of upright totes. There's also a "tooth" for grabbing and placing RC's on top. We want to design a tool for turning sideways RC's upright, but so far are struggling with that. Primarily, our focus isn't on stacking, but on acquiring and using the RC's from the center. That mechanism is pretty far along and looks like a winner.

Still, we keep wondering if there's going to be some strategy that will look obvious in hindsight that is eluding us. Mechanisms aren't the hard part this year; it's choosing the right one for our strategy, and making sure we've chosen wisely.

[MrForbes]

I have the same feeling....but whatever magic strategy there may be that we're missing, we still need to build a robot, and it probably will have to stack totes, and be able to place containers on top of stacks that we or an alliance member make. It also probably ought to be able to right a tipped container before stacking it (or otherwise be able to deal with tipped containers), and also ought to be able to cap a stack of 3 yellow totes on the step, for that extra 20 coop points.

We're still in the design and prototype stage, and time keeps moving along. We do have a sort of working prototype of a "short stacker", and we have a working prototype of a grabber that can grasp containers or totes either upright or sideways. We haven't yet designed all of the stuff that makes these things move.

There are some teams that are pretty clever about figuring out a trick strategy....we've usually been more interested in making a robot that plays the obvious game, hopefully in a relatively fast and simple way.

[Canop3n3r]

Our team this year is going for the 3 tote Auto, so are design pulls the totes into the robot and a pneumatic piston holds the tote in place as our elevator latches on and pulls it up one tote level and then when the next tote slides underneath the elevator will move down and stack the first tote while picking up the second. Our hope it to keep driving while our robot stacks totes. We are using Mecanum drive this year.

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by dchartley

Thanks for the info. Some of the other posts here are trying to be humorous but are not helpful and are cluttering up an otherwise informative thread. I'm mentoring a low to medium level team with only 1 or 2 other adults helping and we can use all the ideas we can get.

Doug

IMO it seems like this sounded like a scoiuting attempt, and not a help attempt. If you are having design problems ill say this. Break down scoring into actions and figure out what your robots need to perform. If you are looking at landfill totes the resources (totes) aren't all in the same orientation.This game was really well designed. But the wall of tasks is absolutely doable but the best way break a wall is to look for weakness. If you want more specific help I know a lot of people would be happy tp help (me included)