Our team had a great first meeting on Thursday! We serviced the swerve drives on our robot from last year, readjusted an electrical board for a west coast drive chassis, and completed a list for our objectives for Saturday morning, all in 2 hours! We are meeting again today, Saturday 01/04, for kickoff.
2 Likes
Yesterday was a long but productive day for our team. Before kickoff we outlined our goals for the challenge and goals for the day in general. After kickoff we started brainstorming ideas for our robot and decided that we wanted to go for the deep cage and algae instead of the coral because we assumed that it had a higher point value. We then created a prototype for a holder for the algae that looked a lot like a scoop. It would be able to hold both coral and algae but would hold algae a LOT better. After learning that placing the algae in the is 6 points but allows the other team to get 4 points, we decided to switch to coral and repurpose an arm from our 2023 robot. The current design for this is a claw that does not open and close and has belts on the fingers to pull the coral in and hold it securely. This has been tested. We have not decided in the claw with be able to tilt forward or backwards or be stuck in a fixed position. The claw will be mounted to the top of a 3-stage elevator that will be anchored to the base of our robot. The elevator design has been taken from our hosting team’s 2023 bot which we already have the CAD for. Our mechanism to climb onto the deep cage has been prototyped but not tested. Basic coding for driving the robot has been completed as well.
1 Like
Our team had a very productive day yesterday! We completely redesigned the climbing mechanism and made a new prototype for it, started on CAD for this new design, cut plates for the coral grabber out of 1/4 inch plywood, assembled and tested the coral grabber (it works!), assembled and tested the elevator mechanism (it also works!), and tested new kraken motors. We hope to have an amazing day today and get our robot entire together and working!
1 Like
A photo of the CAD for our current climber; it will connect to the bottom of the second stage of the elevator system. The climber will go through the center of the cage and the “wings” will keep the climber from sliding off. To “climb”, the elevator stages will contract and the robot will be pulled off the floor. The cage will be pressed into the top plate of our robot.
1 Like
We’re back again! Our robot is now fully assembled and we are fixing design flaws to get it working. We need to decrease the gear ratio on the gear box attached to the kraken motors powering the elevator so that the elevator is able to lift heavier loads. We did have a ratio of 1 to 1 and now we are going for a ratio of 1 to 4 or 1 to 10 (we are not going for speed haha). We are also shortening the shaft on the wrist motor because it is hitting another part of the robot when the wrist is turned. Wish us luck!
1 Like
