Orbit 1690 REAL robot reveal! - "SKYZER"

[Tzury-Orbit1690]

FRC team Orbit 1690 from Binyamina, Israel, presents it's 2016 robot for the game STRONGHOLD !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i92qk6E9_k

[ghesla]

Great Robot as usual!

Good luck 1690!

[Type]

Great job! That shooter looks amazing! I wish my team's robot had a shooter as acurate and powerful as that.

[Tomker]

Thanks for the compliments.

To add to the original post and the video itself, We wanted to share some of the robot's specs:

Drivetrain:

• 8 x 6" WCP Pneumatic tires (Diamond tread) with a 4mm (~5/32") center drop
• 2/3 CIM Custom 2 stage single speed gearbox (Currently sporting 2 CIMs) with a total reduction of 9:1
• One Wheel direct driven by the gearbox and the others are driven using #35 chain
• Theoretical top speed of 15.4ft/s (4.7m/s)
• Front angled wedge to allow for easier traversing of defenses

Intake + Defense Manipulator:

• Front horizontal roller with 6 x 2" AM stealth wheels for initial acquisition of boulders
• 4 Vertical rollers with 2" AM stealth wheels used to center and push boulders through the bumper opening
• Each driven by one AM-9015 motor through a 12:1 versaplanetary
• Omni wheel on each side of the mechanism to prevent friction with the ground
• Snowblower motor through a 4.5:1 reduction used to raise and lower the mechanism
• Doubles as a manipulator for both the Portcullis and Cheval De Frise

Shooter:

• Shooter arm actuated using a 6" stroke DART actuator powered by a CIM motor
• 2 sets of 2 x 4" AM stealth wheels driven by a single MiniCIM using timing belts
• Bottom wheels spin 1.8 times faster than the top ones to generate backspin for improved accuracy
• A mechanism that we named 'The Spoon' is used to keep the boulder in place while picking up or driving around, pull it away from the shooting wheels to allow them to accelerate and push it into the shooter at the right speed
• The Spoon is driven up and down using a Snowblower motor

Controls:

• Each side of the drivetrain has a AMT103-V encoder
• A potentiometer is used to control the angle of the intake mechanism and another on the DART the control the shooter angle
• An AMT103-V encoder is used to determine and monitor shooter speeds
• Two micro-switches are used to create 3 set positions for the spoon (Lowbar, Boulder tangent to shooting wheels, accelerating shooter)
• A camera is mounted on the shooter arm and used for vision processing to accurately align the robot to goal in the X axis and to control the shooter speed
• An Analog Devices Accelerometer & Gyro is mounted on the Roborio to allow us to fix any misalignment caused by traversing the defenses in autonomous

Hanging(?):

• A mechanism was designed using a tape measure and a winch and was sent to manufacturing today. It will be assembled on our practice bot and hopefully - if it works, will be fitted on the competition robot in the Israeli regional in a couple of weeks (stay tuned to see how this thing comes along)

Our whole design is focused around the idea of both being able to go under the lowbar and shooting high from the outerworks line, while releasing the boulder from as high and as far back in the robot as possible. This should essentially make us unblockable from this position because by the time the boulder exits our perimeter it is already higher than a defending robot's maximum height.

I'm also adding a little example of a quick pickup and shoot practice we had earlier today (8/8 shooting in this small snippet):
http://youtu.be/PWZr92l8abI

[Akash Rastogi]

This might be my favorite reveal so far. If I didn't know any better I would mistake the design work for a Team IFI robot. Excellent!

[Joe Johnson]

Awesome.

I like the stabilization during shooting (at least that is what I think you put the front arm down for during shots -- it could be to keep other robots back a bit from your shooter but I am guessing that it's a stabilization thing).

Dr. Joe J.

[Tomker]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

Awesome.

I like the stabilization during shooting (at least that is what I think you put the front arm down for during shots -- it could be to keep other robots back a bit from your shooter but I am guessing that it's a stabilization thing).

Dr. Joe J.

It's both. Initially it was mainly to keep defending robots back, but after driving around a little we realized the robot could get a bit unstable when both the shooter arm and intake are in their top position (which is only used pre-match for starting configuration purposes), we decided we are definitely better off having the intake down when shooting...

[Fusion_Clint]

Nice bot!

[the.miler]

Really surprised this robot hasn't gotten more attention, as it combines the key features of low bar traversal, wide floor collecting range, and high shooter release point in a very logical design. Props to the group of people who came up with your strategic and robot design priorities; this is a high quality shooting robot.

Some of my initial questions:

What motivated your decision to shoot from the protection offered from the outerworks? Does it have anything to do with your cycle speed/consistency? Do you plan on being capable of shooting from the batter as well?

How does your shooter perform with balls of different compliances? It clearly shoots well with at least one particular ball, but at competition you play with the balls on the field.

Good luck on the field; you have a great shot at doing well.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Tomker

It's both. Initially it was mainly to keep defending robots back, but after driving around a little we realized the robot could get a bit unstable when both the shooter arm and intake are in their top position (which is only used pre-match for starting configuration purposes), we decided we are definitely better off having the intake down when shooting...

Awesome looking robot.
Your team definitely did their homework on achieving both the lowbar lowbot and an unblockable shot.
As you pointed out, the dropping of the intake to create clearance for the shot is very clever.

[Tomker]

Originally Posted by the.miler

What motivated your decision to shoot from the protection offered from the outerworks? Does it have anything to do with your cycle speed/consistency? Do you plan on being capable of shooting from the batter as well?

We figured that at least at the final stages of each competition defense being played on high goal shooters will be fierce. Since our main focus was on being a good shooter, we felt like this gives us the best chances of scoring consistently.
In addition, we wanted to minimize the amount of ground we have to cover until we are aligned for a shot, and the best obvious option (assuming we just picked up a boulder and crossed a defense) is as closely as possible to the outerworks
We haven't really tested this capability, but in theory i'm pretty sure we can tilt our shooter arm back far enough to achieve the needed angle to score from the batter. I guess that if the need arises we'll adjust and add this option.

Originally Posted by the.miler

How does your shooter perform with balls of different compliances? It clearly shoots well with at least one particular ball, but at competition you play with the balls on the field.

We did practice with 2 different balls most of the time and saw no apparent difference between their behaviors. As long as the boulders are in reasonable condition we seem to be fairly unaffected by the small changes. Of course when they get really worn our they start to cause some problems and don't fly as fast or as high, but we believe the boulder condition during competition should not get bad enough for us to not score consistently.
Anyway, we are capable of readjusting our shooter speed in accordance with boulders condition.

[ajacob]

Hi I love you robot, I was curious on how you guys are lining up with the target, are you using pid? I would love it if I could see your code.

[Tomker]

Originally Posted by ajacob

Hi I love you robot, I was curious on how you guys are lining up with the target, are you using pid? I would love it if I could see your code.

We are indeed using pid to line up with the target. We program the robot using LabVIEW, and that's as much as I can tell you since I'm more of a mechanical mentor...

I'll ask one of the students or the programming mentors to give a better, more detailed answer

[Thuvishan.R]

Very interesting shooter design, I hope to get a chance to see this robot in person. You have explained a bit about the strategic thought process but I'd like to hear more about the prototyping that went into coming up with this final product. Good luck to you guys throughout your competition season!

[Tomker]

Originally Posted by Thuvishan.R

Very interesting shooter design, I hope to get a chance to see this robot in person. You have explained a bit about the strategic thought process but I'd like to hear more about the prototyping that went into coming up with this final product. Good luck to you guys throughout your competition season!

We actually had a spoof video we released earlier in the season showing our prototype robot perform (which forces us to title this thread 'REAL robot reveal' because most people seemed to believe it was our actual competition robot):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H49_6WVDT98

As you can see from the video, some of the elements in the competition robot we're developed and tested during prototyping, but a few we're designed only during CADing:
- Early on we decided we are not going to be using pneumatics this year since we couldn't find enough instances where we needed it to justify all the added weight, volume and possible complications.
- The intake mechanism was inspired by 971's 2013 intake
- Our indexer (The Spoon) was something we came up with after doing tons of playing around with geometry - which was our main focus throughout the CADing process. It took endless iterations before we came up with something that allowed us to be low enough while using top-bottom shooting wheels instead of left-right ones, and it seems to be working great
- We played a lot with geometry until we got to a good configuration for the shooting wheels two. Placing the wheels in such a way that they have a 45 degree angle between them in the bottom position allowed us to generate a shooting angle of slightly less than 45 degrees upwards which creates a trajectory that is pretty flat - that means we don't need to be too accurate when it comes to shooter speed in order to hit the target
- The drivetrain was somewhat of a shot in the dark for us since we never worked with either pneumatic wheels or a sheet metal chassis