Absolutes such as ‘unique’ should not be modified with most, very, extremely, or other modifiers that indicate degree. Either something is unique (one of a kind) or it is not. (I had to get that off my chest for the 3rd or 4th thread this year asking for ‘most unique pick-a-thing’).
See 1519…
…with the lift stage being on a turret.
$@#$@#$@#$@#, they’re the mostest unique!
I’m going to do it! I’m going to talk about my own team!
We had all of our systems sit on a 22inch turret. TBH maybe wasn’t the most effective solution, but it made our season possible. Without the turret, we would have had the worst robot imaginable. So for that, I nominate 5980 as one of the unique robots I had the chance to see in 2018. Not the greatest. Not even that good, but unique.
:yikes:
Preach!
My favorite aspect of your turret was the way your team FORCED it to work at St. Joe, and then continued improvement for the rest of the season.
We thought our elevator was a bit unique, in that it was essentially two single-stage elevators mounted back to back. The motors (3 RS775s) rode on the middle stage at the bottom, and effectively pushed the manipulator stage upward while pushing the robot downward into the floor. This let us avoid kludgy cables and pulleys. We had two runs of #25 chain on either side of the middle (motorized) stage that were synced together at the bottom with a #25 chain running crosswise. Short of a chain break, there was no way for this arrangement to go cockeyed and jam. The tradeoff was the need to power the moving motors. The CG of the moving motors was traded for CG of cables and pulleys. The elevator was scary-fast when run wide-open.
I still remember the moment when I first found out about this. I was actually outside getting something from my car when one of my students sent a message. “4039 can do the scale now!!!” I ran inside to see it in action on the big screen in the pit area. Now that’s a dramatic use of your withholding - and finally answered the question I was asking myself since kickoff day of “why would anyone want to feed a cube back in through the top of the exchange?”
As soon as I saw this thread I automatically thought of 1519.
Watching them on Darwin, I didn’t think I saw what I saw, and had to ask the guy next to me.
Pretty sure I didn’t see any other articulated ‘bulldozer’ bucket lifting\placing mechanisms like 3711:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpB2-l-aoog&feature=youtu.be
Robot in upper right position in video
Check out 7176: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=48&v=63OP1KdPr9w
Probably one of the most unique intakes I’ve ever seen. I give it a 9/10 on the unique scale. I can’t imagine anything more unique.
5700 was pretty unique this year and won the creativity award at the Championship.
I think 5050 had a super cool climber, however, I didn’t get too good of a look at it. it was a scissor mechanism that latched onto the bar ‘like a bear trap’ fairly violently and climbed with the actuation of the scissors. they used 3 2’’ square tubes per level of the mechanism and as a member of a subgroup that tried and failed to make a scissor climber, I thought it was really cool. here is a link to a video of it in action.
I would say team 250 had a creative arm
the arm won us the Creativity award in Darwin-Curie Detroit
I guess I get to talk about my old team, 1721.
This year they wanted to make a buddy bar, but the only place they could fit it was at the back of the robot. The bar needed to be identical to the field (dimensions, distance from the wall, etc), so there robot climbs in such a way where the drive train is against the scale.
This video is a good example.
971 from any year since 2015. The Schuh robot whisperers are sure partial to their multi jointed subsystems.
2014 would like to have a word with you.
Their 2013 helix hopper was super dope too. I’d say that was the beginning of their truly unique systems.
Hello, I’m Matthew from team 3250. I’m glad to see that you really our robot this year. In Arizona, we had the 3 stage elevator with a roller claw, like you mentioned before. We also had the hook mounted to the elevator, however that didn’t work very well. The reason why decided to do a re-design was because we wanted to get a better auto. At the time, we had a 2 cube scale autonomous that only worked once (not on a real field), and we wanted a more consistent, and faster auto.
This is the 1 time that it worked: https://photos.app.goo.gl/aggRotRb1v80oTG93
Also, we realized that we needed more reach inside the scale. Originally, we tried putting a kicker inside the roller claw, which we had at Arizona, however this didn’t work as well as we hoped. When we came back from Arizona, our main goal was to get a flip around the back. We started by trying to make a pivot mechanism that went over the top of the elevator.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/riDMHyiv9dCAYHCGA
Because I was new programmer, and we just switched to Java, we didn’t want to make controlling it hard, so we tried very hard in order to power it with a piston. While trying to do this, we looked at many different ways, including using golden ratio gears like these: https://airwolf3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/20120804-140235-e1344114486857.jpg
Eventually, we gave up on this and we looked into other solutions. After a long time discussing, we came upon the idea that we needed to design something better. Eventually we realized we should do an arm that flipped over the top. We inspired a lot of the design off of the Robonauts’ robot. For example, if you look at the wheel, you’ll notice that it is a combination of poly and aluminum, which is just like the Robonauts.
Finally, to explain why used grappling hook for climb, was mainly because of weight. Back in 2016, we used a similar grappling hook, however, this time it was more of an upgrade to the original. The problem with the elevator mounted hook was that it was very hard to get on to the climbing bar. If our driver was even a little off, the hook wouldn’t latch and we couldn’t climb. The reason why it was so inconsistent, was because during the season, we didn’t design a climb mechanism until the last moment. After Arizona we realized that we needed a better climbing mechanism, and we had experience with grappling hooks. We decided to draw inspiration from the 2016 hook and design a new hook that would latch better. The 2016 hook had some consistency issues because it had a lever that went down the middle, and when the lever hit the climbing bar, the hook was sprung closed, allowing us to latch. The problem with this was that there was a significant delay between hitting the climbing bar and the hook closing. The new design has two prongs that are sprung closed, and when the hook hits the climbing bar, the prongs open just a tiny bit, but once the bar goes through, the prongs immediately latch. This and some other improvements, allowed our climb to be much more consistent than in 2016.
Here’s a video of the climber in action: https://photos.app.goo.gl/GruIGbhAga2qp5uC2
“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
A little more Queequeg, a little less Ahab, please.:rolleyes:
5937 had a vacuum, and it worked quite well
