Mantis was designed to be built early, and to score fast. A fully functional version of Mantis was completed at the end of build season week 3, and we have been iterating and practicing since. Notable changes from the original version include adding a hood roller on the shooter to reduce bounce out, adding a pneumatic lock on the climber to stop the robot from falling down after the match ends, and adding a 1x1 standoff and plate to add stiffness to the intake. Mantis has 1, 2, and 3 ball auton modes with more in development. The design of Mantis is influenced by many past robots and teams. In particular 2135s 2020/21 robot was a large source of inspiration, as well as the 2020 everybot.
More information about Mantis can be found in our tech book and robot summary page: Robot Summary Tech Book
A lot has changed about Mantis so I thought I would update this thread. Some minor changes and some major changes I will go through in this post. The CAD and Code from the first post are up to date on all the changes, though I can’t say the same for the tech book. The robot summary is updated.
The most obvious change is the addition of a high climb. It was inspired by 973s high climb. We added the high climb in the week after our first district event. The arms are rotated upwards using surgical tubing and released using two pancake cylinders. The new loads from the high climb broke the normal everybot climb carabiner hooks, so we replaced them with some routered polycarb hooks.
The intake saw some minor updates. The leading axle used to have ThriftyBot compliant wheels, they were replaced with red compliant wheels (I don’t know their origin, but we had a lot of them in the shop). It was quite easy to spin the soft ThriftyBot wheels around the thunderhex axle, and we believed this was causing some balls to be pushed away from the intake. We also added some extra large flanges and a small plate that stiffens the leading axle to prevent the belt from falling off.
The shooter stayed mostly the same, we messed around with hood roller speeds but eventually settled back where we started. Adding grip tape to the hood roller greatly increased the consistency of the shooter, and reduced bounce outs.
We added a few new auton modes, and modified some of the existing ones. We made all of our right side autos grab the ball closest to the mid line right away, to prevent billiards auto problems. We added a right side four ball, and our favorite, a left side three ball. The left side three ball pairs with a partner who has a right side three ball. It shoots the preload, then drives to the human player station to collect both balls and shoot those. You can see this auto in action in this match video.
As with the original post, we are happy to answer any questions you may have, or provide any additional information about the team or robot.
