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

[hrench]

four totes at a time. Then four cans at a time... then....

http://application.denofgeek.com/pic...derman2/01.jpg

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

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.

Don't worry there is absolutely something missing and its either the game breaker, or I am missing out on GDC laughing at my feeble attempts at cracking this game open.

[earlybird]

Our current design has been updated to include 2-4 CIM motors depending on how many we want to use to drive and 2 pneumatic pistons capable of lifting 45-50 lbs each. Something like this. We are trying to keep it simple this year but we will see how much longer this lasts...

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Perplexed.
...

I truly believe that the key to this game, at least at the 20-90 percentiles, is time management. So many game pieces, so little time.

• Get your robot working quickly driving and stacking
  • Unless you have a "conveyor belt" design, you have to drive
  • You have to stack; the platforms aren't that large, and the big points are for putting RCs up high
  • KISS - fancy stuff later if there's time
• Practice, practice, practice
• Write code to automate alignments and frequent motions
• Practice some more
• Write autonomous code
• Figure out how long it takes you to do each thing - including driving and waiting for the human players to feed you game pieces
• Figure out
  1. What's your highest-scoring way to work the landfill and step (with maybe an occasional trip to a human station)
  2. what's your highest-scoring way to work a human station (with maybe an occasional trip to the step)
• Run timed drills on both of those
• Watch videos, adjust, and drill some more
• Make a video of each strategy so the scouts and your alliance partners know that you can really do what you say
• Work out resource allocation for each match with your alliance partners
  • Play to everybody's strengths
  • Don't run into each other
  • Maybe manage some teamwork
• Get out there and score as many points as you can in two minutes and thirty seconds!

[Chris Endres]

confirmed...

http://imgur.com/FgOiIV7

[Donut]

Standard kit chassis, forklifts on an elevator, nothing too radical for us. The biggest debate right now is building a simple arm to grab containers or adjusting the fork width to use the same mechanism. Going to stack only moving one tote high, then grab bottom and repeat, hopefully we will keep the robot height under 42" so we can leave our forks permanently on and move the robot on its back to satisfy the transport configuration.

One thing we are doing different is we are going to grab totes from the wide side, we felt the blocks that extend down 1-2" around the handles are a sturdier place to hold from than the lip of the totes. We're also toying with grabbing two totes at a time for each layer since they are arranged nicely in pairs in the landfill, and the approach from the wide side facilitates this since there is no need for a middle support. If it doesn't pan out we'll cut the forks shorter for just one tote. I hope it works though as I really want to see us trying to drive around with two stacks of 4-6 totes in tow.

[GortGortGort]

Posted a photo today of the Boltbots design entry this year . The robot is constructed entirely from recycled material . Lifting frame is Tele-Power poles from office renovation dumpster , Green Street sign found in a ditch used at the top for support brackets . 80/20 was acquired from a local collage scrap bin .

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/41182?

[MrJohnston]

* C-shaped drive base w/ 4 wheel tank drive powered by 4 CIMs
* Internal stacker w/ 2-stage scissor lift powered by Dart Actuator
* Fold-out clamping acquirer with wheels set up for intake and expulsion
* Linear guides for stack stability

This is all under construction now... We have some ideas to add later, time permitting.... Our prototyping leads us to believe we'll be able to stack a recycling bin on top of five totes internally and set them on a scoring platform in under 30 seconds... We'll see what it actually does in a week or so.

[JesseK]

This morning I would have said we were changing our design to a snow plow.

Now the weather looks like the 'snow' will come a day early when it's warm and thus be mere rain.

Weather presents the major risk with attempting anything mildly complex using in-house machining - we have the schedule, labor, tools and skill - but for at least 1 week every season we don't always have weather on our side.

[Random42]

Two robots. That's all I'm going to say for now.

[dchartley]

4 lead screw lifts each with a pair of fingers that can lift totes from the end or sides or RCs. Lifts 4 different objects to different heights simultaneously. 45 deg. angled omni drive. Is capable of capping a four stack of totes.

Doug


http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/41197?

[piersklein]

We are taking pieces from each of the Ri3D competitors. You can probably guess which aspects. Instead of trying to create an entire new mechanism to complete the tasks, we are spending all of our time making what we have work better. It worked very well for us last year and we are sticking with it

[CoachC]

Hmm let's see.

Zero sponsors
Zero mentors
Six students
One coach
A drill
A screwdriver
A wrench
And a sawsall.

We're here to compete!

Our bot will do everything except fly!

And we're working on that too