Week 2 Build Season Recap
Hello everyone! Apologies for the late Week 2 Recap, but our team has been very hard at work these past few days of build season and we are eager to share our progress!
Field Element Construction
One of our top priorities during Week 2 was to start construction of the field elements, we wanted to build replicas of the Processor, Cage, and one side of the Reef. All of our Week 2 meetings were partially dedicated to sourcing material for field elements and construction. By the end of the week we managed to fully assemble a wooden replica of the Processor and a wooden base for the Reef. As for the Cage we had deduced that constructing out of wood wouldn’t be strong enough, so we are working on sourcing steel pipe and plates so that we can weld together the Cage in-house.
Also, big shout out to CyBears (4682) for manufacturing and providing us aluminum brackets in order to construct the Reef out of PVC!
Prototyping
In addition to the field element construction, the team has prioritized prototyping for game-piece manipulation and scoring. We split into various different prototyping subteams in order to test our concepts, and then reconvened after each meeting to discuss what our findings were during testing.
Coral
Many subteams focused on testing potential end-effector concepts for Coral manipulation and scoring. In the end we came up with two promising designs for being able to score Coral onto the reef. The first design utilizes compliant wheels which work well with a very rigid gamepiece like the coral, these wheels are powered by a single motor and can work to ‘eject’ the Coral onto the branch by spinning outward. Our second design for Coral scoring was a static ramp that Coral would be staged in, and at the end of the ramp would be a motorized latch that blocks the Coral from sliding out, and when we wanted to score the latch would open allowing the Coral to slide onto the Reef.
Algae
We had one prototyping subteam test out potential end-effectors for Algae as we prioritized Algae prototyping less compared to Coral from our Game Strategic Analysis. We took some inspiration from 2019 as the Cargo and Algae were both pretty similar ball gamepieces that we could use a cargo intake for. We were able to put together an end effector that used two rolling surfaces (compliant wheels) to manipulate Algae with great success.
Cage
While we did want to prototype prototypes for climbing onto the Cage, we did not have access to a model of the cage to test with, so instead we just brainstormed different climbing mechanisms that would allow us to climb onto the Shallow or Deep Cage. We looked at earlier games such as 2010 and 2013 that had a similar climb and tried to find inspiration from what other teams did, we also looked at what Ri3D teams were doing and we really liked the Rusthounds Deep Cage climb as it took a relatively small footprint on the robot, was fairly trivial to manufacture, and didn’t seem to compromise our teleop scoring. One concern that was raised about doing a climb like this was how the Cage goes into the frame perimeter while climbing, and that there needs to be enough space for the top of the Cage and the chain not to touch the robot.
CAD and Robot Design
Our design team got to work brainstorming potential robot archetypes that would fufill the desired game tasks and robot qualities list that we created from our Game Strategic Analysis, we have looked for inspiration from pick and place games from previous years, as well as current Ri3D concepts and other OA Build Blogs. So far we have 4 potential archetypes that we rated on different metrics on a 1-5 scale such as Simplicity, Cost, Manufacturability, Center of Gravity (CoG), and Driver Friendliness.
Archetype 1 “Cranberry Alarm”
Archetype 1 is inspired from the Ri3D Cranberry Alarm architecture, it features a 2 Stage Cascading elevator that is able to provide enough height to score Coral on L4. The end-effector is mounted onto the elevator carriage and functions to score both Algae and Coral, the Coral scoring is done by a series of rollers that work to score Coral onto the Reef, the angle of the Coral scoring is done at a fixed angle to reduce the amount of complexity we add onto the robot. We saw that Cranberry Alarm had a hard time scoring onto L4 with the angle they had setup on their Coral mechanism, so we are testing what the ‘optimal’ angle is for being able to score Coral on all 4 levels consistently. The geometry of the Coral scoring mechanism works with a hopper so that the elevator has to go to its lowest point to intake from the hopper, this means we have no ground Coral intake with this particular archetype. As for Algae scoring there is an arm that pivots on the end of the Coral mechanism that is able to ‘dealgaefy’ the Reef as well as intake Algae from the ground and score it in the Processor, this arm extends outside of the frame perimeter when it is manipulating Algae but it can be stowed folded up above the Coral mechanism within the frame perimeter for beginning the match.
Overall Ratings: (Higher Number = Good, Low Number = Bad)
Simplicity - 4
Cost - 3
Manufacturability - 4
CoG - 2
Driver Friendliness - 4
Archetype 2 “Jack in the Bot”
Archetype 2 took some inspiration from 2910’s 2023 robot with a telescoping tube at a low pivot point + an end effector on a wrist. To fit within the frame perimeter and starting height limit, the tube would have to be 4~ stages in order to reach L4 scoring height. The end effector would be something similar to 4522’s dual purpose intake which functions for both Algae and Coral, the geometry of this archetype opens the door for a potential ground Coral intake along with a ground Algae intake as the end effector can extend outside of the frame perimeter. Another advantage of this architecture is the very low profile of the robot when the telescoping tube is fully stowed, this gives a very low CG, and it allows for a Deep Climb that allows the robot to ‘fold’ onto the Cage because there is nothing protruding from the robot because of the low profile, kind of similar to 1114’s 2010 climb.
Overall Ratings:
Simplicity - 2
Cost - 1
Manufacturability - 1
CoG - 5
Driver Friendliness - 3
Archetype 3 “Competitive Corgi”
Archetype 3 is inspired from the WCP competitive concept and it features a 2 Stage Cascading elevator and a hopper for intaking Coral from the loading stations, similar to Archetype 1. The biggest difference is the end-effector which closely integrates both the Coral and Algae scoring mechanisms very neatly into a neat package, it is able to score Coral on all 4 levels, as well as descore Algae off the Reef and score it into the Processor, however the end-effector geometry does not allow for a ground Algae intake. One added bonus of this archetype though is that it unlocks Algae scoring capability in the net, which makes scoring Algae a lot more lucrative when compared to just scoring Algae into the Processor. There is also a Shallow Climb which uses the elevator to lift the robot off the ground, which can also be implemented into Archetype 1. However, we feel it may not be worth it to lower our elevator speed in order to climb off of it, as that ends up compromising our teleop scoring ability for Coral and Algae.
Overall Ratings:
Simplicity - 4
Cost - 2
Manufacturability - 3
CoG - 2
Driver Friendliness - 4
Archetype 4 “1323 would probably make this”
Archetype 4 is based off of 254’s 2019 robot architecture, featuring a 3 stage belt-in-tube continuous elevator on a turreted base. The end-effector which functions for both Algae and Coral can extend outside of frame perimeter and ground intake Algae, the end-effector is on a triple jointed arm with a differential wrist which allows it to intake Coral in a sideways orientation from the over the bumper ground coral intake. The range of freedom with the triple jointed arm and the differential wrist on the 3 stage elevator allows for Coral scoring on all 4 levels, as well as Algae scoring in the Processor and Barge.
Overall Ratings:
Simplicity - 0
Cost - 0
Manufacturability - 0
CoG - 2
Driver Friendliness - 4
Conclusions
We hope to finish the rest of our field elements by the end of Week 3, and finalize our design and have the robot CAD done within the next few days so we can start manufacturing soon.
Until next time!
