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.”
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A little more Queequeg, a little less Ahab, please.:rolleyes:
5937 had a vacuum, and it worked quite well
1619 has been a big fan of the horizontal intake ever since 2016.
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Simbotics from 2008 would like to have its own word
Everything old is new again.
971’s 2014 robot, one of my favorites of all time, is technically innovative in more subtle ways than many of their recent efforts, but just as mind-blowing. There were many Simbot SS clones in 2014, but 971 took it a step further by powering the upper and lower jaw completely independent of each other. This enabled a lot of cool features like their ability to “slap down” a bouncing ball, improve catch chances, shoot out both sides of the robot, and close the jaw fully for the starting configuration. But it also meant that the very simple act of holding a ball in the claw is dependent on precision control keeping the jaws moving in sync at all times. Really an amazing feat, and I think the beginning of 971 pulling away from the rest of the field in controls side tech.
The roller tusks on the lower jaw are pretty cool as well.
For this year I would love to pitch in one team’s design that they did not end up going with but they showed off in their robot reveal video. Team 558 was a very small yet fast robot with switch and scale capabilities. One of their prototypes was a vacuum intake. I would have loved to see this in competition but sadly they did not go with this design probably for a lot of reasons. Regardless, I do love the idea of this. Here is a link to 558’s robot reveal where they show it off a few times. Also, their grappling hook climber was really cool in itself!
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