pic: FRC Team 1501 T.H.R.U.S.T. presents

[Akash Rastogi]

I'm sure this is an awesome bot and all, as usual, but I really miss your crazy sheetmetal designs

[tindleroot]

Great robot, easily one of the most competitive in Indiana. I don't think I saw the drop down collector this past weekend - were you just driving the robot over the boulders to pick them up or is my memory failing me?

I think one of the most memorable moments of Tippecanoe was when you guys shot a high goal from on top of 4103 with a few seconds left in the match. Even though I knew it was a technical as it happened, it was still impressive to watch and I hadn't heard the crowd as excited as they were up to that point.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

Great robot, easily one of the most competitive in Indiana. I don't think I saw the drop down collector this past weekend - were you just driving the robot over the boulders to pick them up or is my memory failing me?

Nope, good catch.

We had the over the bumper collector at North Carolina. And it broke nearly every match. We struggled with harvesting in North Carolina. So for Tippecanoe, we moved the harvesting roller behind the bumper zone for protection and added a 3rd camera servo position to look at boulders going into the intake. This increased our average from 2 boulders shot in the high goal at NC to 5 boulders shot in the high goal at Tippy. If we can't see the boulders, we drive from camera feedback, so there is a brief pause sometimes when we collect a boulder, but that's better than jamming a boulder and can't shoot.

It was a design iterations we do on our team, like I am sure many other teams do. Sometimes things don't work well in the heat of the competition so we are always trying to improve a design.

PS: That's the first collector we've ever tried to make on our team, next time, we will do better and learned alot.

[carpedav000]

Man, those pesky defense bots

On a more serious note, is there any particular reason why the boulders spin while you are driving around with one? From what I saw it also happens when the turret isn't tracking.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

Man, those pesky defense bots

On a more serious note, is there any particular reason why the boulders spin while you are driving around with one? From what I saw it also happens when the turret isn't tracking.

Ha ha...1741...BTY...I'd like to point out, that was AWESOME that we agreed on the "Sally-Port Agreement". I hope you was able to do that in your next match as well.

Wow...very observant! Actually we call that "pop-corning" the boulder. On Saturday when the boulder was in the indexer and made the ball sensor, it did that automatically. On Sunday, we changed it to only popcorn when we the shooter wheel is spinning, so it was stationary on Sunday.

The reason was to eliminate driver error of position the boulder correctly on top and ensure that the boulder was still not captured in the harvesting rollers. So by pop-corning the boulder, it's rolling up on top of the harvesting wheels, frictionless, so when we launch the boulder with our air kicker, it's consistent when it hits the shooter wheel. If it was pinched on the top intake roller wheel, the air kicker will still get it out, but the exit velocity was different. So we found it best to keep the boulder rolling to make sure the shot was consistent each time.

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

Ha ha...1741...BTY...I'd like to point out, that was AWESOME that we agreed on the "Sally-Port Agreement". I hope you was able to do that in your next match as well.

Wow...very observant! Actually we call that "pop-corning" the boulder. On Saturday when the boulder was in the indexer and made the ball sensor, it did that automatically. On Sunday, we changed it to only popcorn when we the shooter wheel is spinning, so it was stationary on Sunday.

The reason was to eliminate driver error of position the boulder correctly on top and ensure that the boulder was still not captured in the harvesting rollers. So by pop-corning the boulder, it's rolling up on top of the harvesting wheels, frictionless, so when we launch the boulder with our air kicker, it's consistent when it hits the shooter wheel. If it was pinched on the top intake roller wheel, the air kicker will still get it out, but the exit velocity was different. So we found it best to keep the boulder rolling to make sure the shot was consistent each time.

Wait, what was the Sally port agreement?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

Wait, what was the Sally port agreement?

"Let's both pick Sally so we can see what we're doing."

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by Richard Wallace

"Let's both pick Sally so we can see what we're doing."

Ah. Okay

[Wayne Doenges]

The robot's name is Invader

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

I'm sure this is an awesome bot and all, as usual, but I really miss your crazy sheetmetal designs

Robot and teams are who they are because of their mentors. Our sheet metal mentor passed away sometime ago and me being a Controls Engineering mentor struggle with sheet metal. Others pick up and we continued for a few years, but over the past two years we've had to simplify down to our current mentoring capability. I try to only push the team to the resources we have. I wished we had another sheet metal mentor and a water jet...that would be my wish list.