Most Unique Features

[sporno]

Originally Posted by ChrisMcK2186

My teams bot is chock full of uniqueocity(yes, it's a real word). The best part has to be what I like to refer to as the Overkill Arm. We have a sliding/telescopic arm that goes straight up. I know 612 has one very similar and I've seen a few around but this one takes the cake. Those arms extend to the top rack at the most. We, however, decided to go for the extreme, about 12 feet or so. If we put a long enough manipulator, we could unplug the rack. I'll try and get some photos up, you really must see this.

Chris

edit:wow, post 100!!

totally unique .. cant forget the chain tensioners and the casters! Ya your bot fully extended is freakishly tall

[ChrisMcK2186]

Freakishly tall?! O.K., I'll give you that. I just uploaded a photo, so you too can see the majesty.

Chris

[Ed Coleman]

I think this was a pretty genious idea. A ramp that is lifted by the drive motors. You see the two wood cams? The have rubber on the bottom of them. All we have to do is drive forward and the second bot is lifted with the cam. This is what you truly call keeping it simple.

[ChrisMcK2186]

Ok, the photos are up. Go to the delphi photos and look for "2186 OverKill Arm".

Chris

[Daniel_LaFleur]

I believe the most unique feature of our (1824) robot is the hinge point for our ramp/platform. We hinged at the bottom of our robot, 3/4" off the ground. We then used 3/4" steel box tubing from the hinge point. This allowed the entire structure for our ramp/platform to be supported by the carpet (not just the ends). It can be seen here.

No chance for our ramp to buckle or get pushed around.

[Nuttyman54]

Team 190's gripper uses one piston to both close our claw and raise the tube up to a 55* angle all in one motion. In addition, the top digit is a 4 bar linkage that curls around the tube, giving us maximum wrap, while allowing it to fit within our starting box. The grip surface is covered with 50 durometer Shore 00 polyurethane (similar to Dr Scholl's gel insoles in properties). The entire gripper weighs 4lbs including piston.

Our "wings" have a number of innovative features. They are made from sheet metal aluminum, and no one piece is thicker than 1/16". They have over 2000 dimpled holes in the top for strength and traction. Inside each wing is a complicated string system that activates various features automatically as the wings deploy:
1) There is a bungie attached to the outer wing sections that pull them out as the wings fold down.
2) One string attached to each of the three pistons keeps them within the starting box. These slacken to let them pop out.
3) A lexan anti-rollback device is also held down by a string which slackens with the bungie, allowing it to pop up.
4) the pistons lock into place with a ratchet system, to keep them from folding under when firing.

The wings have a constant slope of 12*, and an initial lip of 3/8". Thus, any robot with more than 3/8" ground clearance and sufficient drivetrain power can get up. The top lifting surface is 37.5" wide and and 36" long, so most robots can fit no problem. Once a robot is up, the pistons fire, raising them to 13". If the pistons malfunction or the robot does not make it up in time to fire, the anti-rollback device will keep them at 5" (these actually caught 1280 and won us SVR)

To reset, pins are removed from the capstans to unlock them from the globe motor shaft. The driver can then manually rotate the wings back into position.

When folded, the wings are held in place with cotter pins attached to a servo on the elevator. This doubles to keep the wings from deploying early, as well as providing strength and protection to the elevator.

[Daniel_LaFleur]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

Team 190's gripper uses one piston to both close our claw and raise the tube up to a 55* angle all in one motion. In addition, the top digit is a 4 bar linkage that curls around the tube, giving us maximum wrap, while allowing it to fit within our starting box. The grip surface is covered with 30 durometer polyurethane (similar to Dr Scholl's gel insoles in properties). The entire gripper weighs 7lbs including piston.

Our "wings" have a number of innovative features. They are made from sheet metal aluminum, and no one piece is thicker than 1/16". They have over 2000 dimpled holes in the top for strength and traction. Inside each wing is a complicated string system that activates various features automatically as the wings deploy:
1) There is a bungie attached to the outer wing sections that pull them out as the wings fold down.
2) One string attached to each of the three pistons keeps them within the starting box. These slacken to let them pop out.
3) A lexan anti-rollback device is also held down by a string which slackens with the bungie, allowing it to pop up.
4)the pistons lock into place with a ratchet system, to keep them from folding under when firing.

The wings have a constant slope of 12*, and an initial lip of 3/4". Thus, any robot with more than 3/4" ground clearance and sufficient drivetrain power can get up. The top lifting surface is 37.5" wide and and 36" long, so most robots can fit no problem. Once a robot is up, the pistons fire, raising them to 12.5". If the pistons malfunction or the robot does not make it up in time to fire, the anti-rollback device will keep them at 5" (these actually caught 1280 and won us SVR)

To reset, pins are removed from the capstans to unlock them from the globe motor shaft. The driver can then manually rotate the wings back into position.

When folded, the wings are held in place with cotter pins attached to a servo on the elevator. This doubles to keep the wings from deploying early, as well as providing strength and protection to the elevator.

Your ramps were the only ones I considered equal (or better ) than ours at BAE, and you had that wonderful arm too (I was sooooo green with envy).

What a great 'bot you all have there.

[Ben Piecuch]

We designed our robot to do "drive by scoring." Meaning, we were able to score a ringer while still moving, thereby elimating a lot of the defense that would be played against us. The inspiration for this design came from two teams, Wildstang in 2005, and Rhodewarriors in 2006. Both teams scored off the side of their robots, and were able to use their drivetrains to ward off most defensive attacks.

We accomplished the same effect by allowing our grabber to rotate 90 degree to the left and right after picking up a ringer. The picture below shows the extra degree of freedom we have with our manipulator. As I said, in theory this mechanism works great. However, we found it very difficult to actually have any room to drive around in, nevermind a clear shot at any side of the rack. Fighting your way to/from the rack seems to be about the only way to score this year. (Unfortunately...)

Here's the picture of us in "drive-by" mode.

We powered this "wrist" mechanism with a window motor, geared down about 6:1. We tried two different codes to operate it. The first had the arm mimic the joystick position, so the co-driver had to hold the joystick in the position he wanted the arm to be in, with position feedback controlled with a gyro. The 2nd mode of operation allowed the co-drive to only use the joystick to move it to position, just like an elevator or arm. We then used a "home position" button to return the arm to it's vertical position, again controlled by the gyro.

Feel free to ask more questions. Hope it opens up some ideas for other teams.

BEN

Our robot starts out in the 4 foot category, then locks up a 10 foot elevator. Anyone who saw it at PNW or Davis knows what I mean.

And we have two cameras. Because remember, it's as Mark Leon said at SVR last year: "CMU cam, it's just that easy." So we went with two.

[s_forbes]

I absolutely love all of the features that our team was able to work into our robot this year (seen here), it's flippin' sweet! A short list:

Arm:
-Light and strong! I think the entire assembly weighs under 20 lbs with camera, motors, wiring, etc.
-Single jointed, runs off of a single 125:1 banebots motor (which has survived an entire competition with no problems at all)
-Completely modular: Mast comes off with a single bolt! Motor and joint mounts are held on with clamps so they can be easily adjusted with just two bolts.
-Awesome materials: 1/16" thick, 3" wide round alluminum tube for mast, 1/8" thick 2" wide tube for top part of arm. Neither are breaking any day soon.

Drivetrain:
-Made with 4" wide, 1/4" thick fiberglass I-beam. Fairly indestructable.
-Best part of robot: 4 out of the 6 drive trains on the robot have their tensioners built into our Andymark transmissions. They weigh virtually nothing and take up almost no space. (seen here)

[Arefin Bari]

One neat feature that caught my eye this year was the "easy button" feature from team 386 (Voltage). They have an easy button mounted by their gripper, so when they are ready to score, the easy button is right in the middle of the tube. When the easy button hits the plates on the spider, the grabber automatically lets the tube go and caps the ringer.

[meatmanek]

Two unique things about our robot:
Our kicker wheel - it picks tubes off of the floor and turns them vertical
Our grabber - it opens from the inside of the tube, and holds the tube vertically. The long arms of the grabber act as guiding mechanisms so that when we drive up to the goal, the spider foot is pushed into the center of the grabber, where an IR sensor triggers closing the grabber, which shoots the tube onto the goal.

[JYang]

The things unique... our transmission, gripper, wheels.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by meatmanek

Two unique things about our robot:
Our kicker wheel - it picks tubes off of the floor and turns them vertical
Our grabber - it opens from the inside of the tube, and holds the tube vertically. The long arms of the grabber act as guiding mechanisms so that when we drive up to the goal, the spider foot is pushed into the center of the grabber, where an IR sensor triggers closing the grabber, which shoots the tube onto the goal.

This system really was quite elegant, and anybody unlucky enough not to see it needs to come to Indianapolis for a private showing. Winner of the BMR Xerox Creativity Award, and well-deserved.

[Cody Carey]

One of the nicest things about our robot is the modularity of it all. The entire ramp mechanism can be detached with two bolts, the pneumatics system and support frame for our ramp can be detached with four, each drive module can be detached with four, and the electronics board can be detached with four. The connections to the pneumatics board (all eight spikes) are all done with 15 pin connectors, and the motors are connected to the main electrical system with mini Anderson connectors.

The most unique design factor is our ramp. The following animation shows how it works.



Another nice feature is the built in wheelie bars on our drive modules. If you were to loko at our bot, you wouldn't even realize that the curves did this. The wheelie-bar effect can be seen in this next animation.




And Unique in the fact that we were one of the few teams that decided to go for a low-scorer is our arm. Only the bottom rung, but man can we score fast. ~5 tubes a minute now that we've gotten a little practice. (I'll throw the animation in for kicks, too)