Left: A shot of the robot in starting position on practice day at the Dallas Regional.
Right: The picture submitted to FIRST before ship.
See you in Atlanta!
We’re proud of this year’s robot-we definitely learned the value of “KISS” this season…
I think our robot deserves the “Most Purple Award”, don’t you? 
It doesn’t even look to have enough clearance to pick up balls, does it really squash them?
How does your robot work? It’s the closest looking robot to my team’s robot (201) that I’ve seen so far.
It is very purple indeed 
The roller system compresses the ball about 3 inches
Alex:
Essentially, there are two sets of belts connected to two rollers each, one set in front and one in back. Pickup, despite the appearance of not having enough clearance, works very smoothly (yes, it does squash balls somewhat) and either feeds into our hopper in the back or shoots out of the top depending on the situation.
The front rollers are powered by one CIMWalt, while the back rollers are powered by a CIMWalt and a FP Dewalt as well. We can empty our hopper in around 2 seconds.
In my opinion, one of our best features is our rotating turret with automated tracking, which is able to switch between targets that are in range and follow them accordingly. Another cute and useful function is that when a trailer is in range, the fire button lights up on the control board! 
That’s like ours, but better! We have two belts that feed to a rotating turret, but we don’t have a hopper like you guys. Instead we use one compartment for everything.
And your camera program sounds awesome! Do you just automatically dump when you are in range?
And where is the camera?
the little black eye in the center of the hood
definitely the most bullet-proof robot we have ever made. And not to disappoint, it is indeed totally constructed from wood, from the rollers to the chassis.
The belt system was designed from the ground up to have the belt speed be the same as the firing speed, causing the balls to move at extreme velocities though the entire system, and making for a very rapid reload and firing cycle. this allowed our robot to play a “running and gunning” strategy that worked effectively throughout the Lone Star qualifiers
Congrats to 418 on their Chairman’s award win at the Lone Star Regional! Are you guys going to Atlanta?
yep 
Off topic for just a sec -
Frank, I wish you would post a photo of your ‘wings’ that you created and wear at demos…those are so amazing…
Ok, back on topic:
Aristophanes.
I believe you guys have only slightly more purple than us this year…
But it’s definitely close. We’ll have to have a contest for that award!
We don’t automatically dump when we are in range (we leave it to the discretion of the operator) but I believe we have programmed in the capacity to dump when in range and the turret is lined up with the trailer.
We also have built into our OI a tactile response to alert the operator to a belt jam. When our robot detects the belts not moving when they are supposed to be firing or intaking, the control panel vibrates with a buzzer. The operator can then reverse the belt direction to dislodge the jam.
here is a link to an early prototype of the roller system
here is a link to a vid of an early prototype
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAqhuE6KqIk
and a pic of the wings Jane mentioned
Just to keep it in the family, a picture of FTC 418:
And VRC 418 (winner of the 2009 Washington VRC championship and the “Amaze” award):
It’s like a family!
