I don’t think it’ll be a huge problem this year as without link bonuses robots should be scoring mostly on separate pre-agreed portions of the reef. We’re planning on having some code that’ll realign our robot to the adjacent branch if this happens, or the driver could just place on a different open level.
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Practice Field
After noticing last year that the carpets we used for robot testing were shifting around too much for high-quality drive practice and starting to fray at the edges, we began looking into ways to improve the quality and durability of our practice field. Since we were already looking at Masonite prices to help eliminate carpet sliding, we decided to build a full wooden field to really take our drive practice to the next level. The team has been working throughout preseason and into build season on this field so it is ready for competition season and hopefully a scrimmage.
The field design we landed on is heavily inspired by schematics created by Robodrome and a discontinued wooden field created by FIRST:
Discontinued Field
Robodrome Field
Our field setup works in 3 stages. The first stage is setting up the Masonite underlayment. The Masonite itself is a set of 28 standard 4’x8’ sheets. Each section is 2 sheets of Masonite conjoined with 12” wide duct tape and labeled for ease of use and transport. Once laid out in the grid below they are held together with a small piece of packing tape. We store these sheets on a cart designed by our mentors that make moving the half-ton of Masonite much easier.
The next stage is carpet. This carpet is attached to the Masonite with Velcro as shown below. We use cardboard tubes to help with rolling the carpet evenly and we’ve lined most of the edges with duct tape to prevent fraying.
For the final stage, the wooden field is placed on top of the carpet and bolted together. It’s designed to be modular so we can store all of it in the relatively small area behind the curtains of our school’s flex theatre. It also makes it easier to just use certain game pieces if we don’t have the time for the full field setup.
Here in late February our team will be hosting a scrimmage on this field with a few other local teams. This scrimmage is hopefully one of many more to come and will serve as a stepping stone for establishing a permanent playing field in our community. Sadly, we cannot leave this playing field up as long as we need, and have to compete with other extracurriculars for space to set up this field. To remedy this we have been reaching out to our local school district to try and establish a permanent robotics facility.
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Design Update
Here’s a sneak peek at our current design! We’ve been working hard to complete as much as possible for now, with the goal of handing off a functional robot to our programming subteam as quickly as we can. The elevator has been machined and is mostly fully assembled (we’re waiting on a couple of parts to complete the gearbox), the algae claw has been partially assembled, and the rest of the robot is currently being machined. We’ll post more specific details about the robot in the following days, along with the current robot CAD, so stay tuned!
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That’s so awesome! I’m happy to see that bot improved on so much!
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That looks great!
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Looks great! We have a very similar design so we are following along. Good Luck this season.
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Nice cart there!
You might want to also fab yourself up a pair of carpet yankees. Its a pretty straightforward welding project. Get good size casters, of course!
I made a pair for my team… They are orange now, of course!
One pro tip: don’t put a handle sticking out on the “down” side. It hits the ground and limits your pick-up ability.
Here’s the three-roll carpet field we have to drag out of our shipping container. You can see the yankee pair in the upper right.
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As expected, Central Missouri is gonna be stacked!
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Does that algae mechanism pivot low enough to get into the processor? Can it pick up from the floor? We’ve been looking at a similar overall concept but have had trouble with the algae portion.
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When it reaches down, it should theoretically be able to plop it into the processor. And when the elevator is lifted up along with the claw, it should be able to do the same thing for the net. We are in the process of assembling the robot, so we’ll be checking to verify that the geometry works. I’ll be posting more specific CAD details either today or tommorow.
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This is really cool! How do you fold down the funnel? Looked like a form of passive mechanism to me but could not figure out how!
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We’re gonna try to connect the same rope that’s used for the climb for dropping the funnel as well. There’s a cotter pin attached to the 3D print (Not in the CAD model). Once the climb starts, the rope will pull down on the cotter pin, releasing the door. The door has magnets attached to it that allows it to snap out of the way once the door is released. It’s something we’re gonna be messing with in the next few days once it’s fully assembled (most likely on Saturday).
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Build Season Update
Hey everyone! Over the past few days we have been working on manufacturing and assembling the first iterations of our elevator and coral manipulator. Our machine shop has been working hard to make all the parts necessary to integrate the two subsystems.
After we assembled the elevator and manipulator, our next task was to attach the elevator to the competition chassis. Once everything is mounted, we will use our DAS box (robot in a box) to test the code that the programming subteam made.
Our goals for next week are to have our competition chassis fully assembled with all of our subsystems fully wired while some of the members on our Build subteam get to work on removing our swerve modules off the pre-existing ALPHA chassis and attach them to our competition frame.
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Design Update
Apologies for the delay in posting this; we’ve been quite busy. I wanted to provide a more in-depth update on our CAD progress so far, so here we go!
Drivetrain:
Our drive base utilizes MK4i modules with an L2 configuration and Krakens for both steering and driving. Our electronics are currently mounted on top, but this may change if we switch our climber mechanism. The battery is placed at the back of the robot to counteract the weight of the elevator and algae arm. There’s a possibility of adding weight to the bumpers on that side if needed. We’ve positioned our cameras on each swerve module to meet our vision sightline requirements on the field. They are currently printed out of PLA, but we might switch to TPU if necessary.
Elevator:
Our elevator is based on 4414’s design from 2023, featuring two moving stages and continuous rigging. This season, we have switched to the Kevlar-backed HTD belt from WCP, replacing the rope we used last year due to issues with fraying and snapping. We hope the belt will be more reliable this season. The elevator gearbox is geared at 6:1, theoretically allowing us to lift the elevator to its maximum height in less than a second. Initially, we used the Last Anvil compact belt tensioner, which is an excellent and well-manufactured product, but it proved somewhat inconvenient for our purposes. For the next iteration, we plan to switch to a cam system, similar to what 4414 used in 2023.
Feeder:
The feeder system utilizes two Krakens that spin sets of star wheels, allowing us to center coral when dropped from the feeder station. One of the main problems we encountered with this design was figuring out how to move the ramp out of the way when climbing. To solve this problem, we’re folding the ramp to one side and securing it with magnets. The ramp is held up with a cotter pin, and once the climber winch begins rotating, it will pull the cotter pin down, folding the ramp out of the way. We’re still not entirely sure if this system will work, and we’ll wait for testing next week to see the results.
Algae Claw:
The algae claw is attached to the carriage on the elevator and should allow us to remove algae from the reef, score algae in the processor and barge, and grab algae from the three pre-staged locations on the field. For the first iteration, the claw utilized a CTRE Minion along with a Talon FXS. After testing the claw with the current compression, we realized how much torque the claw would need to hold onto the algae. Therefore, we’ve decided to switch to a Kraken, which should provide sufficient torque. The claw is as heavy as we initially thought, and we will work on lightening it as much as possible for the next iteration.
Climber:
We still haven’t fully decided on our climber. For our first iteration, we’ll be testing the Everybot climber to see if it works with our design. If it doesn’t, we’ll most likely switch to something similar to the 4522 climber and work on packaging the system from there. We have enough motors left over, so that won’t be an issue.
We’re excited to be testing the robot later this week, once it’s been fully wired. We’ll post a update of our results then! Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions! The CAD model is linked below:
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Have you tested your feeder geometry? I’d expect having the polycarb funnels end closer to the inside might work better because the star wheels have to do less work.
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Probably. We’ll be testing that soon. Thanks for pointing it out!
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What direction is the swing of the funnel plate going to be?
I was thinking it would have to swing to the side (blue) or swing down close to the Coral mech around (red)
We really like this design for integration of the climber!
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It swings to the side (blue)
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That’s what I thought, thanks!
Looking at it closer, it appears I confused the block with the arm attached to it for a servo.
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Looks efficient as usual, but I’m curious, will the elevator, at its lowest configuration, be able to fit underneath the shallow cage if needed
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