Why you designed your robot

[157#1Driver]

I just wanted to know why teams choose the design they went with for their robot. And what they thought they could have done better.

[Matt Reiland]

I think if we had to do it again and we know what we do now, we would put all of the motors in the drivetrain geared for medium speed about 6 feet/sec with a double goal grabber and a killer tread system that lifts the goals also.

[mike pawlak]

it was an issue of time, weight, and what a majority of the team thought was important

[asher]

I think a majority of the teams would say if they would go back they would build some awesome 2 goal grabber with treads and such, or as I like to call them, boxes on wheels. I want to send out a big congratulations to teams that went beyond they boxes on wheels mentality, sure it wins finals for you, but what's the fun in that? I guess it all depends how you want to play the game, if you just want to play half the game, or if you want to play all of it. I'm sure this issue will come up many times for many future games, sacrificing design for a killer drive system, but like I said its all about how you want to play the game, and I know I want to play all of it.

Ashley,
Proud to be a 31er
modularity is king

[schitnis]

I am sure that we will not have the same game next time, so if u r thinking on what to do on the robot next year, then make sure that u take in to consideration that your robo will be doing a different task.

[DanL]

Hmm, if we were going to do it again, well we already have the drive, we would just make something to grab goals. We kinda spent too much time worrying about getting the power and ran out of weight/time to make something to grab a goal - or in asher's words, we sacrificed design for a killer drive system.

Ahser, you said, "I know I want to play all of it." Does that mean you wanna make an uber-cool robot, or make the relatively simple power guy?

[asher]

perhaps i should explain myself a bit more,

Team 31 always tries to design to be modular, it is our goal to cover as many aspects of the game as possible. In the case of this year we had several "modes" but our 3 primary modes were that of a ball basket/1hook or balls of floor/basket/1hook or 2 hook. We always strive to design our machine to be the best we can possibly think of, and sure its really hard to get all that in and make weight and size, the answer (at least for us) -- modularity. I'm kinda sad we didn't get to use more of our modes for St. Louis (we only got to use one ) but hey there's always next year (and yes I know it will be a different game, I've done 3 different games so far). Sure this system wont work for everyone, but we've found it to be perfect for us. If anyone wants any details on how we design for this or how it all works feel free to IM or email me.
I hope this answers your questions.

asher
still proud to be a 31er

[DanL]

Still not quite sure I understand what you mean by modes. Do you mean different tactics, or something like your bot is actually a $5000 lego set where you can take off parts and add other parts for different gameplay?

[Clark Gilbert]

I'm pretty sure that's what she means.....

Last year my team was similar....we had our robot with 2 goal grabbers....then we could add a "deck" to carry a robot around on...or a ball grabber arm to reset the bridge or pick up big balls....

[asher]

Yeah its the erector set idea, and since we've started using extrusion its really simple. Too bad we didn't take any pictures this year and I only have one from last year, maybe I should try to get some...
Last year was awesome though, we could stand up on the stretcher and turn in circles so we could get big balls up and be pulled around, that was by far my favorite mode ever.

Ashley
proud to be a 31er

[Wetzel]

We wanted to make a robot that focused on doing one maybe two aspects of the game really well.
One problem, we all agreed to do one thing, but couldn't agree on which one thing.
So we can grab a goal and pickup balls and have a fair amount of traction.
The challange with doing everything? Weight.
We never ran with our runner due to wieght. We took the compressor off due to weight. Shrunk our scoop due to weight.
That and by not focusing on any one thing, everything works ok, but nothing stands out as an amazingly awsome mechanism.

And the real reason we built our robot?
To get to the other side of course!

Wetzel

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sleep! Huh!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!

[Jeff Waegelin]

When we designed our robot we decided that three things were important: goals, speed, and pushing power. So, from that, we built a two goal grabber robot with a two-speed transmission. With our high gear (9 ft/sec), we can get to the goals very fast, and with our low gear (2 ft/sec) and all-steel construction (heavy, but worth the weight!) we can push almost any other robot.

[GregT]

My team made our design decisions based on efficiently and simplicity. We decided that all the winning teams would be strong 2 goal handlers, so that’s what we went after. We decided that to be a strong goal handler we would need to lift the goals. We decided that to be a strong goal handler we would need more then one speed. To simplify we combined the 2 together, dropping down a second set of lower geared wheels to push our robot and goals up (it works very well).

If we did it again we would save weight and add the drill motors to our drive train.

The game this year did not encourage a lot of difficult design challenges, I think balls were not made worth enough. I think human player balls should have counted for 1 pt, there should have been 2 colors of balls on the field, your teams color would be worth 3 pts and the other teams color would be worth 2 pts. All the same zone rules should have applied, so strong goal grabbers would be needed, but making balls worth more would encourage ball bot development.

Greg

[Chubtoad]

It is always a big issue with our team how many aspects of the game we shoudl tackle (as I'm sure it is with every team) and every year we try to do Everything. And after it is all over we argue that we should have just done "insert important aspect here" instead. This year we knew we needed Two goal grabbers, at one point someone said "well we can take off one to put the extension on (because of weight)" and we all shot him down. We knew we were going to need power, lots of power. Now between last year and two years ago we became really good at ball handling and building extender arms. Last year we grabbed a big ball with an articulating arm and the extension worked next to perfect, and two years ago we had a basket that went up and down. So it was an obvious decision for us to make a basket to put balls in. I had an awesome idea for being able to hold a goal and collect balls at the same time , and then being able to get another goal, but we all realized how ridicoulously heavy it would be, so we dumped the idea of picking up balls, and we fell back on our strategy of two years ago with getting them into the basket from the player station. Yesterday we altered the program and now we have shaved about 3 seconds off of the ball loading process (made the extender go up faster) and about another 5 seconds off the actual dump process (all automatic). The tether is another issue that we all had great ideas on, including a mouse bot, airplaines, something like a snake in a can, pnuematic ball launcher, or the most recent, putting our bot into "Double Secret Override Mode" (which listens to NO limit switches) and lauching our basket across the field

My point being, somtimes you can do some things with a lot less risk, and a lot less mechanism then other things (Getting balls from player station VS. the field) and yes I know that there are 40 balls on the field versus the 10 behind the players station, but other bots can stop you from getting the ones on the field, not so with the Player Station,
Good Luck Everyone!

oh oh oh I almost forgot the point of this thread, if we were to redo it, we would make everything LESS durable, we made our bot WAAAAAYYYY too sturdy and "ROBUST", if we didn't waste so much weight on the drive system and base we could have made a few other features a little bit better.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

We get together the day after the game is announced, break into small groups and brainstorm. Everyone is involved, students, parents, teachers, business partners. No idea is thrown out. We spend the next few days looking at the way the game is played and work the ideas from our brainstorming sessions. Then we start some prototyping while eliminating some of the impractical ideas. The students really drive this part of the design based on strategy and game play on a board, all the while looking for what functions will suit the game both in the qualifying and finals. This slows the process of building but gives us a more refined design before we begin. After that, all systems are open for refinement (redesign) if they prove impractical in competition.
Good Luck, See You in FL.