2008 BAE SYSTEMS Granite State Regional

[Steve Kaneb]

Originally Posted by Travis Schuh

I am especially curious how they deal with having the ball touch the ground or another robot before they touch it again... Hopefully they will have it working by SVR (their second regional).

Originally Posted by acdcfan259

I gotta say 190 is a bit dissapointing. I think everyone was expecting a lot more. But i think it's just to hard to line up their suction cup. Good concept, but not that practical.

In response to Travis, after we've swung the ball over the opponent's finish line, we pick a position, lower the line so the ball is just above the floor, then shut the suction off. Immediately after the ball is released, we turn the suction back on so we can pick the ball up on the bounce. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten that far yet, but we hope to be working by SVR (although it would be really, really nice if we could get it by the end of tomorrow's qualification matches!)

In response to Jake (acdcfan), our operator was driving the arm under full manual control, which requires several starts and stops to make sure that the suction cup is at the right height relative to our arm. Once we get the operator assists correct, he won't have to control the suction cup winch separately from the elevator height adjustment or the extender. (One advantage of having your main programmer being your operator is he knows what he's telling it to do both on the stick and in the code).
By the way, if our robot were practical, I think quite a few people would check the team number again.

It was absolutely wonderful to get the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control award today (we made our own high-powered slip rings for our continuous-turn turret, as well as several doodads to get proper feedback). We just hope we can back it up with on-field performance as soon as possible.

Despite all of our concerns, inspection was surprisingly pain-free, and we have high hopes for what is a ridiculously complicated robot.