how far have you gotten on your robot?

[Tim Delles]

which brings up another question: have you had problems with your robot/prototype? i mean something like blowing up or smoking. our motors started to smoke

First thing is was the robot moving. If the robot was not moving then most likely your motors were made to run opposite of each of each other. Which could cause them to blow up since they would be fighting each other.

[gondorf]

actually our robot was upside down and we were staring at it dumbfounded.

the motor was plugged in but the gear that it was attached to was stuck

and during all this i thought: dont those look like the cookies i put in the oven before school...the oven is still on...oh no!!!

[atomikitten]

Originally Posted by gondorf

actually our robot was upside down and we were staring at it dumbfounded.

the motor was plugged in but the gear that it was attached to was stuck

and during all this i thought: dont those look like the cookies i put in the oven before school...the oven is still on...oh no!!!

aha! OK here's what went wrong. If the gear that the motor's output shaft was attached to was stuck, the motor was doing only what it knows how to do; it wants to move. It will keep forcing its way, drawing more current, trying to get its output shaft to move. If it's locked up, eventually the motor burns itself on the inside.
This is why we gear motors down. If you attach the motor directly to the wheel's axle, it doesn't have enough initial acceleration to go from zero to its max rpm, which is what it's trying to do. You know we solve this problem by putting a gear with fewer teeth on the motor, then a bigger gear on the wheel, and you get a ratio. The motor has to rotate several times before the one on the wheel makes it all the way around, but it's actually a good thing because it prevents it from locking up. The motor gets to move right away, so it's happy.
The worst thing that can happen is the motor is trying to move but can't, and then it keeps trying until it burns out. In the future, make sure the motor is free to move before you turn it on, and be ready to turn it off right away if something doesn't seem right.
A lot of other things could go wrong. You said you were using the kit, so I hope you were using the correct motor. It's the regular CIM motor, not the larger ones; part numbers FP801-005 vs FP801-001.
When motors are gone, they're gone. Spare parts are in 5.4.5 of the manual (you feel kind of crazy when you have a copy of the manual on your bed) the URL for the IFI store is http://www.ifirobotics.com/0-index.htm and I don't know how long it'll take for them to get there, so hurry.
I hope some of the things covered in this post were already familiar to you.
If you need more help, CD is the right place! Good luck!

[sanddrag]

We have made a prototype shooter (including some CNCed parts) that will send the ball 60 feet! The accuracy still needs a little working on, but it was hard to know on a windy day and outdoor testing space.

The gearbox design is almost done. CIM motors have been ordered. The wheels and frame construction has been decided. Frame design is starting. Wheels, gears, bearings, sprockets, and chain will be ordered on Wednesday.

The ball manipulation group is still working on conceptual pickup, conveyance, and feeding technique and volume allocation.

Overall, I'd say we're slightly ahead with the drivetrain and pretty much on track with the ball manipulation.

[Stuart]

well weve gotten the kit frame and gearboxes build and mounted. weve got our bin fully designed and 75% done. and our cannon . .well its in that weird period where we know what it needs to look like and hows its going to mount and how its going to work, but not drawn out. so for a weeks worth of work I would say were ahead of the game.

[Nita]

We are now done with exams (we did work through them), but we are behind our schedule. Chassis building is in progress, one prototype tested, and the camera's getting coded while someone works on a scale model of the field. There are parts to be ordered and the website team is still brainstorming ideas.

[Arkorobotics]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

We have made a prototype shooter (including some CNCed parts) that will send the ball 60 feet! The accuracy still needs a little working on, but it was hard to know on a windy day and outdoor testing space.

The gearbox design is almost done. CIM motors have been ordered. The wheels and frame construction has been decided. Frame design is starting. Wheels, gears, bearings, sprockets, and chain will be ordered on Wednesday.

The ball manipulation group is still working on conceptual pickup, conveyance, and feeding technique and volume allocation.

Overall, I'd say we're slightly ahead with the drivetrain and pretty much on track with the ball manipulation.

Clarkees have CNC mills?!
Lucky...

We are building a life size field and training n00bs, while the veterans and some n00bs are working on the design.

[gondorf]

i made the entire field in solidworks and our team leader made the platform out of plywood. we found that the kitbot barely makes it up the ramp without bottoming out

[Rickertsen2]

Practice field: 60%

Proof of concept prototypes. CAD drawings for lower chassis. Fabrication to begin tomorrow.

Programming: Havn't had too much time for it.

Animation: 10%

Team 949 has gone through our concepts and we are now going through the designing period.

We are planning to build a prototype launcher and the target tomorrow and by next sunday we should have everything autocadded and ready for building..

Maybe we should build the kop bot.. hmm.. other than that we haven't done anything else

[Sgraff_SRHS06]

We've also finished designing. We are just now in the final stages of prototyping and putting the finishing touches on our designs. Tomorrow we are going shopping for a good portion of the additional parts we need.

As programmer, I have no say in all of this, but I can make special interest advocacies. We finally got our Gyroscopes and our rights to the CMU Camera and the Accelerometer. The programmers, including myself, are currently writing pseudocode.

But we have made much more progress in our design than any of our teams in the past, outside of our rookie year.

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As for kitbots, we are using the kit, but we are not staying inside it. This may be the first year in which we don't use the kit wheels, though. Our drive team wants "tricks" (trick wheels) and "grips" (grip wheels). After their experiments with Deeper Thought, the decided that the kit wheels were not going to be sufficient for climbing up the hill. So, I'm not sure if the kit wheels will hold. However, the chassis will be from the kit and we'll do better weight management (so we actually have a good frame).

[Nuttyman54]

We've got the design figured out and are tweaking a few dimensions. some of the team is building a test launcher and a goal, and we've got the Kitbot build (but not running) as a test bed for the sensors.

[Alex Pelan]

The short answer: "Not nearly far enough."

We have tested some prototypes with varying levels of success and have started some design work. We haven't put the kitbot from '06 together yet because of some offseason work we have been doing involving a kitbot that we had already put together.

[Rick TYler]

We didn't like how the first one turned out, so we are buildiing a second 'bot. Aw, just kidding. The chassis team is done with their design and they are ordering parts. The game system team is having the prototype shoot-off on Tuesday, and will order parts this week. The programming/controls team is working on driver selection, functional control design, and testing the camera and other sensors. The electrical/pneumatic team is playing cards and waiting. The PR team is supposed to deliver final designs on Friday for our t-shirts, driving suits, helmets, buttons, banners, and the animation file for our blimp.

One week in, we are four weeks behind. Life's like that. From Shakespeare in Love:

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Replace "theatre" with "robotics" and you begin to understand...

[sciencenerd]

We are using the kitbot frame with minor modifications, and have that all designed. Our [strikeout]arm[/strikeout]* mechanism team has also created a shooter prototype. It seems to work well, so now we are tweaking it and finding the best configuration, making a final model, and moving on to the next challenge.

*I've been guilty of calling it the "arm" team accidentally more than once, and been ridiculed. My team also made fun of me for calling it that on Chief Delphi once as well, so here I am, making public amends to the community at large.