pic: WildStang 2009

[Dave Flowerday]

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[wo-bot 141]

Very impressive again wildlstang. got a few questions for you though. How many balls can that thing hold. Also what kind of drive train do you got?
good luck. Its unfortunate we wont see you unless we get put in the same division at nationals.

[Herodotus]

This is essentially exactly the same as one of our early ideas. We narrowed it down to the three wide dumper or a single helix and went with the helix so we could have the option of ranged firing.I was fairly indifferent between the "barf bot" as it was designated on our team, and the helix we ultimately went with. It'll be interesting to see the two designs and how effective they are in action.

It looks great. Good luck and hopefully we'll see you guys at IRI or Atlanta.

[ttldomination]

My question is how do you guys bring the balls up further?

Like, your robot is full in the picture, but how do they go up?

[Collin Fultz]

Stang -

That looks hot. I always amazes me the things you guys can do and still stay under the weight budget. Great work as usual. I'm really looking forward to seeing you guys at Boilermaker!

[Cory]

This looks far too simple to be a Wildstang robot. The last robot to be this simple? 2003. Last championship? 2003.

I think this bot will go far this year.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by ttldomination

My question is how do you guys bring the balls up further?

Like, your robot is full in the picture, but how do they go up?

I'm going to guess that the floor of their hopper moves up (hey, if I guess this on every robot with a big hopper, eventually I might get one right).

[s_forbes]

It's starting to look more and more like simple high speed dumpers* are the way to go! I certainly didn't expect to see so many winning teams use this approach.

That's an interesting storage mechanism, how exactly does it work? It looks like the bottom of those side compartments elevates up, but it's hard to tell.



*That still doesn't sound like the right term... how about high velocity uni-directional orbit ball ejection systems? Rolls off the tongue nicely.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by wo-bot 141

Very impressive again wildlstang. got a few questions for you though. How many balls can that thing hold. Also what kind of drive train do you got?
good luck. Its unfortunate we wont see you unless we get put in the same division at nationals.

Drive = 4 wheel crab/swerve
How many balls = theoretically, we can hold about 36, but that is not ideal because it causes jamming that delays how long they can be shot/deposited in a trailer. We can keep 20 well lined up in silos and consistently deposit them within 5 seconds, sometimes 4 seconds. 36 balls would take as much as 10 seconds due to having to actively agitate them and waiting for them to settle.

My question is how do you guys bring the balls up further?
Like, your robot is full in the picture, but how do they go up?

lukevanoort is right. We have 4 silos that store balls and we raise the angled floors. See the WildStang sign - it goes up and down on each side separately.

[Lil' Lavery]

How are the balls sorted into the silos without jamming?

[Madison]

Originally Posted by lukevanoort

I'm going to guess that the floor of their hopper moves up (hey, if I guess this on every robot with a big hopper, eventually I might get one right).

That's how our hopper works, for what it's worth. I'm surprised we haven't seen more of them.

[Raul]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

How are the balls sorted into the silos without jamming?

Each silo can only fit one ball across, and they just fall into the silos from the top. They sort themselves out to fall into the silos pretty well as we drive around picking them up. When one silo fills up they just fall into another.

[Schnabel]

Hey Raul, what motor and gear ratio (if any) are you using on your ejector?

[Qbranch]

Very Slick. I like the dual silo concept... great way of getting around the problem of not being able to collect balls while dumping/floor is in transit to reset position. Cool!

Any practice videos? Cool programming tricks?

Looking good stang... See you in Chicago.

-q

[Mike Soukup]

Originally Posted by Cory

This looks far too simple to be a Wildstang robot.

Hey, what do you mean by that? The 2004-2008 robots were sim.... oh, wait, I guess you have a point there. In all fairness, the 2006 robot wasn't unnecessarily complex; the target following turret added a lot of accuracy and was a key to our success.

Originally Posted by Qbranch

Any practice videos? Cool programming tricks

We didn't take any videos of the robot in action, you'll have to wait until MWR.

No cool programming tricks yet, but we do have some up our collective sleeves; we hope to turn our partially functioning traction control system into something usable by next week.