Robot Architecture, Prototyping, and NEO Vortex First Impressions
From Tuesday to Thursday this week, we have been brainstorming robot architecture along with mechanisms and started to prototype systems we know we’ll need. Additionally, we also received two NEO Vortex (Vortex’s? Vortexes? Vortexi? I don’t know…) in the mail on Thursday.
Robot Architectures
After we brainstormed initial mechanisms, we fit them into five robot architectures, and discussed the possibility of each.
Architecture One & Alternative: "Arm Back Feed / Dunkbot"
Arm Back Feed
This is our “if everything works as we hope, this is our design” bot. The shooter and the intake would be mounted to a deadaxle and are mounted as close as possible to each-other in order to limit the size of a transfer system.
The shooter can pivot to allow for variable shooting, and for shooting up and into the Amp. That is our biggest overhead concern with this robot, and will be testing the feasibility of shooting up and into the Amp tomorrow.
The intake is a slapdown intake with passive vectoring tubes (see KrayonCAD above), although we are exploring other vectoring systems inside the robot and that decision will be made with further prototyping.
As for climbing, we are looking at using two telescoping arms to keep things as simple as possible. This will be a constant throughout all of the robot architectures.
Alternative Design - “Dunkbot”:
If we find that shooting up and into the Amp is not feasible with this design, then we do have a backup in mind. In this design, everything is the same except that the shooter is on a pivot powered by a pneumatic piston so we can “dunk” (or place from above) the Note into the Amp.
Architecture Two: "Elevator with Wrist"
Elevator with Wrist
This design has a ground slapdown intake, a shooter on a pivot, and an elevator that raises and lowers the shooter.
The elevator would be to place the Note up and into the Amp, and to possibly give us a longer range of shots into the Speaker if possible. Additionally, it could be used for the Trap, but that is not a focus so we would not design around that.
The elevator can be used for a climber as well instead of using telescoping arms like I mentioned earlier, similar to many robots in 2018.
Architecture Three - "Static Shooter with 118 2013 Deflector"
Static Shooter with 118 2013 Deflector
This design still retains a slapdown intake, but adds a transfer system and a static shooter with a deflector flap like 118’s 2013 robot to adjust shooting angles. In this design, the intake would score in the Amp, not the shooter. We have also discussed a hood if the deflector does not work.
Architecture Four - "2016 Style Arm"
2016 Style Arm
This would be a combination of 1619 and 971’s 2016 robots with a pivoting arm and the intake, speaker, and amp mechanism all on one side. The arm would be raised to shoot down into the Amp, and the Note would exit the opposite side of the shooter to score into the Speaker.
Initial Prototyping
The goal of our initial prototyping is to prove the feasibility of our architectures to help guide our final design decision.
Ground Intake
For the intake, we are testing types of wheels, distances, vectoring (active or passive?), and surfaces.
Quickly, we found that green compliant wheels as the top roller with surgical tubing affixed on a hex axle as the bottom roller was effective. Combined with this, we used a piece of aluminum and polycarb as backing.
Trying a belt intake, we found that the grip was iffy, and just wasn’t fast or “touch it, own it” enough for our liking. We also have more experience with wheeled intakes.
We also found that vectoring passively within the intake with a beam or other surface is possibly feasible, although we want to do more testing, and make considerations towards vectoring within the robot as well. There was issues where the piece could get jammed, shoot back out, etc.
Shooter
For shooters, we separated them into three categories:
- Top + Bottom Rollers (spaced wheels or solid roller)
- Two Wheel
- One Wheel
We are playing around with compression, and in tests have found compressing the note down to 8 inches to be promising, although we plan to test more. Additionally, we are looking at spin and are planning to either drive one wheel slower than the other in a two wheel setup, or test 95’s shooter prototype.
In preliminary testing, we found that noncompliant wheels (such as colson’s), work best to shoot the Note so we are planning to prototype with those.
Climbing
We will be using telescoping arms for our climb which we have a good amount of experience with at this point, so we spent most of initial brainstorming and prototyping coming up with hook ideas to grip or latch onto the chain to prevent slippage.
The current idea is a hook with a small insert that the chain will fall into after sliding up an incline. We currently have found that the best way to reduce slipping is to slot onto the chain which causes the chain to align at an angle, then creating a slot which reduces slipping all-together.
NEO Vortex First Impressions
We ordered two Neo Vortex motors and got them in on Thursday.
The through-bore hex is AWESOME, and our mechanical teams are already thinking of how we can utilize its potential. The first thing that jumps out is how useful they are for prototyping due to the through bore hex. That alone will speed things up!
When setting them up, we thought we may have accidentally killed the Spark Flex after plugging it to update firmware via USB C, which caused the motor controller to turn off and go dark. After finding a CD Thread about a similar issue with Spark Maxes, we were able to fix the problem by putting the Flex into recovery mode.
We did not see any immediate evidence of the “shaft wobble” other teams are experiencing, although we’ll be testing more and hooking them up to intake/shooter prototypes soon and I’ll report back results.
Now just to wait for the Kraken’s to arrive. 
Looking Ahead
On Friday, we will continue testing, and then the team will come together to present their findings and decide on what should be manufactured for further testing.
Our number one priority is testing shooting up and into the Amp as that will help us decide our final robot architecture. If it works as we hope, we will be able to lock in robot architecture during the design meeting on Friday, barring a decision about intake vectoring as well.