Our kicker prototype
At the moment, we are only using the correct angle for kick, but aren’t considering the air drag!
We would appreciate any feedback!
Looks good! How far from the bump is your kicker? Is it pneumatic or does it use surgical tubing?
It’s near of the floor. The bumper is placed with 10 inches above the floor, so the point of contact between kicker and ball is nearly 9,5inches. We are using a motor with gear box!!
Looks good. A lot of teams have shown kickers that are being cocked by hand, but it’s nice to see one that’s motorized.
We’re playing soccer this year, 1860 better win the World Champs in Atlanta this year. 
Hmm - very nice - is the kicker fairly accurate with every “kick” (in terms of direction, speed, ball control?) Also, is the reset time fairly fast?
I think that the main trouble that we’re having is the ball position for the kick at the moment.
Before this, our main trouble was find the exact angle to kick, because we need consider three fundamental points in the trajectory: the height of the bumper, the height of first bump and the height of the second bump.
We think that we need improve the kicker in order to pass the second bump without touch the floor!!
Would be much better if we could put a small guy inside the robot to play the match 
Just to clarify…your kicker uses ONLY a motor and gearbox to provide the impulse? No tubing or springs???
We don’t use springs or anything with elastic energy conservation. I don’t understood exactly what is “tubbing”, but we calculate the force for the kicker based in the centripetal acceleration!!
By “tubing” he was referring to the surgical tubing provided in the kit (stretched out to provide elastic energy). Your answer shows that you’re not using it.
So did you just program a limiter onto the motor? Does it reverse, or is the motor somehow mechanically pulled away from the kicker?
This looks really effective! good job.
We are using two limit’s sensors (in order to provide for us two positions: the armed position for the kick and the position after of the kick. Note: the same sensor which detect that the ball was been kicked will detect if there is some ball for kick).
So we keep our kick armed within FRAME PERIMETER and when the driver to press the button, the CIM motor turns forward. After kick, CIM motor turns reverse and keep armed position.
By PWM variation we can change how far the ball goes!
Note: we’ll adapt some mechanism to guarantee that pendulum will keep the armed position when the robot move yourself.