Welcome to the Lakota Robotics 2024 Build Thread. This is our first ever year on Open Alliance and we can’t wait!
About 1038: We are a community team based out of a suburb in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is our 22nd year in FIRST Robotics. We are not affiliated with any local school districts and we are entirely sustained through outside donations and sponsorships. This helps to keep Lakota Robotics free of charge for our members. Our team has approximately 7 different school districts and 11 different schools. This past season, we won the prestigious Impact Award and were able to go to Worlds for the first time in 10 years. We were also honored to win the Industrial Design award twice at competitions in 2023.
What to expect from 1038 in the 2024 OA season:
Weekly whole team updates (Mechanical, Media, Controls, CAD)
Public Code
Public CAD
Smaller, more consistent, updates within the 1038 channel on the Open Alliance discord server
Over the past few days of build season, 1038 has been very busy coming up with prototypes as well as brainstorming strategy for the upcoming robot. Below are some of our notes from the Day 1, 2, and 3 of build season!
Kickoff brainstorming:
Auton (ideas):
Blue: score one pre-loaded, leave, pick up, score again (speaker)
Pink: similar to Blue, score pre-loaded, pick up another, at least one in amp (charge for coop)
Can we charge the amp during auton (for amplification)? (score if you can charge)
Hit button for at beginning of tele-op
Tele-Op (ideas):
Purple: Other team filling amp, they need rings: need to be fast + shoot from midline to scoring area
No full court shots
Yellow: pick notes from floor, not HP, focus on amp (other teams go for speaker)
Orange: pick up notes from the floor, not HP, focus on speaker but try to design for both
Blue: focus on ground pickup, shooting long distances, focus on speaker
Green: focus on amp (const. charge), other teams are more likely to go for the speaker, can help more teams if you go for amp (>2x score)
Red: focus on ground pickup, score mostly speaker bc more points than amp
Pink: play in circular-pattern
Try for both amp and speaker
Make robot shorter than the stage (<2’ 4” or taller with mods?) → harder to tip a short robot
Focus on amp → don’t want to hit button immediately, wait for 3x game pieces to be ready to score
Working w/alliance:
Best to specialize, work with alliance to fill gaps
Focus on one, have a back-up mechanism?
Coordinate when to shoot (only one robot at a time?) → circular motion?
Melody bonus>> (18 in either speaker/amp)
Potential faster going through the speaker
With coop bonus, need 15
Potential: kit-bot geared towards speaker, a lot of younger teams might target speaker (less doing amp)
Defense: 5 rings in the center, move to your side? → bumper can’t cross line prior to tele-op (tech foul if contact w/other robot)
Feeding our alliance notes
Not really worth it to build a base focused on defense (can’t use while touching beams, etc.)
Mobility → mobile bot yay (avoid other teams playing defense on us)
Taller = shorter field of view of scoring
Be amplified ALL THE TIME
Time to travel across the field? Max of 9-10 cycles?
No defined endgame! (15 sec auton, 3 sec, 2:15 tele-op)
Coop - requires 1 game piece within 45 sec (pretty much a given, incorporate into strategy) → GP!
One point for pressing the button (both teams)
Doesn’t really matter after quals?
Stage (ideas):
Orange: avoid chain
Specialize in trap scoring? Same mech as amp? → stagger: while amp is on, place in trap then resume amp
Problem: unable to amplify speaker
One ring per trap, three per alliance
What are alliance partners doing?
Need to be in the middle of the chain → need to do earlier in the game to avoid robot collision/interference during “endgame”
End of the match → avoid wasting time?
Cycle time???
Trap has a door → need to be able to push open (need to stabilize while hanging on the chain → brace on stage support?)
2 in trap, 2 on the same chain = RP + Harmony
RP doesn’t require robots to be on the same chain (10 pts + 2 robots on the chain)
Score trap, other robot hangs, score second trap + hang, last robot hangs on other chain = three hang + 2 trap)
Harmony is per additional robot (2 pts)
Climb on the same chain at the same time?
Concern: robot collision
Can all teams get on the same side?
Assist other robots to climb? (forklift, etc.)
Three robots on the chain → not worth it
Another robot can be running cycles (>4 pts)
Score one in speaker + park is equivalent
Throwing disks: not super important, HP (three attempts)
If hits another robot → penalty??
Cannot be scored ANYWHERE else (penalty if you try)
Defense strategy? Leave in front of opposing alliance source area
Force to open the trap: ⅛” polycarb on a door hinge
Design Brainstorming:
Base:
Reversible way belt system that can place the notes on floor or in the amp (extent from 2 feet to 3’)
Small base width and tallish robot
Acquisition:
The ring is pulled up through the bottom of the robot and it is then pulled straight up by wheels or pulleys
Ramp needed to elevate the note before acquiring
Intake from multiple sides of the robot that lead into the same “platform” so that the robot can acquire in any orientation
Under bumper acquisition that feeds to rotating arm that can move to be flush with the amp
Star compliant wheel to have more grip on the note
Rail system that guide the note to a spot in the robot
Deposit:
Thing that pushes out ring through the center
Arm that can articulate to different angles to place in amp or shoot
Guided up in an arm that can stop and push out the note via a piston
Forklift with bucket
Claw
Guided out with wheels or belts
Disk guided into “catapult thing” and then note is pushed out like the high five robot
Endgame (Lift/Trap):
Shooting the piece vertically into the top of the top (nevermind)
Latch that would be stopped by the chain when running into it and then hook on the chain
Really Narrow J piece or hooks
C piece that is extended up by a piston that contracts thus pulling the robot up
We have made lots of progress and will have an update soon. We Apologize for the delay. This is our first year as an Official Open Alliance team and we are still trying to figure out the best way to transmit information.
During the second week of build season, 1038 is hard at work being just a couple days away from our CAD deadline. Mechanical has fabricated many prototypes while controls has completed skeleton code and begun vision training.
Base: We finalized our base design and began working on bumpers for our base. It will be a 26” by 26” to try and make a smaller surface area for cycle space and time. Our bumpers are wrapped completely around at roughly 7.35” off the ground. We utilize an octagon base that turns into a square using a 2x1 REV Maxtube extrusion to attach the swerve modules and create a square base.
Acquisition: For our acquisition, we have decided to go with an under the bumper design showcased on the cutout in the base seen in image 2. The acquisition utilizes two sets of rollers in order to intake the note off the ground. We plan to use 2” wheels on the lower bar and ~3” on the upper one.
Storage: For our storage mechanism, we plan on going straight into our scoring mechanism from the acquisition using a type of guiding track to make the note go into an upright position.
Scoring/Trap: We have created an integrated mechanism that works primarily for the amp/trap but can be modified through speed adjustments to shoot into the speaker. This mechanism receives the note in an upright position from a horizontal position after the transition period. We have a mechanism that will angle the note to fit the geometry for the amp as well as the speaker with enough motor power. For the trap, our scoring mechanism is able to work through a front piece holding open the trap door and inserting the note using the same process as the amp.
Climb: We are currently working on developing the best hook mechanism we possibly can. We have played around with a few different designs to ensure the best attachment to the hook.
Lakota Robotics has been hard at work finishing up the mechanical assembly of our robot. With only approximately 2 weeks left before our first regional, we are looking forward to completing the wiring of the robot as well as controls testing and driver practice.
Our full robot CAD has been posted above featuring the completed design of our robot. In some preliminary testing, we have determined there need to be a couple modifications such as a brace for our chain mechanism so it can mount to the stage during our climb.
We have fully prepped all our parts in 1038’s signature hydro dip as well as prepped all the metal so we could ensure our number one rule, aesthetics. For the final robot design, we have decided to stick with an amp scoring focused robot that also has capability to score in the trap and speaker. In order to score in as many ways as we do, the team has created something called the TRAG (two roller angled gripper) which allows for the note to change angles one way to go fast into the speaker and then reverse the direction to go into the amp/trap. We have also developed a sliding hook mechanism in order to store the hook as close to the bottom of the robot as humanly possible so we can gain more height for the trap.
Our coding sub-team has gotten all code they can done for the final robot code whereas our vision team has been working on training an AI in order to detect april tags as well as notes for our vision system this year. Some other members of our controls sub-team have been hard at work on our autonomous code for this year while practicing their code on our prototype robot. As always, all code can be found at Lakota Robotics - FRC Team 1038 · GitHub
Our media sub-team has been working on all written awards for this year as well as the impact award video. They have also been working to design buttons for this season and make some previously designed buttons to hand out at Arkansas.
We have completed iterations 1 and 2 of our “Swag Lights” LED Controller which consists of a Raspberry Pi Pico mounted on a custom circuit board that attaches to the RoboRIO.
This allows us to use the RX/TX serial connection on the RIO to cause state changes in the LEDs for driver indicators.
After version 1, we realized that the USB port on the Pi Pico was blocked by part of the RIO so we couldn’t program while the board was attached which caused us to rotate the Pico 90 degrees. We also added some capacitors and a diode to help with power noise to the Pico and to prevent USB power from the Pico from trying to back-drive our 12V DC to 5V DC converter on the robot
Drawing files for V1 and V2 are attached:
Version 1:
Team 1038 had a very successful event this weekend at the Arkansas Regional. We would like to give a huge thank you to the event organizers for hosting and Team 1781 for our friendship in the pits. We would also like to thank our alliance partners 6055 and 3102 for a great event.
At this event, we had a very good run and finished qualification matches in 9th place. We were then picked by the 5th seeded alliance captains Tech-No-Tigers and to round out the alliance BOSS. Lakota Robotics was also awarded with the Industrial Design award. We had another student win the Dean’s List Finalist Award, our third in three years. Overall Violinda held up very well with only minimal changes to the hanging mechanism. From our own data, we were 1st in amp and first in trap (1 of only 2) at the event.
