Congrats on building an impressive robot! The power and trajectory of your shooter were amazing. Only wish we could have met in the eliminations for a pseudo rematch of qualification match 5. Good Luck in Denver…
Thanks and congrats to you guys as well on your impressive performance. We obviously were also looking forward to an Eliminations rematch but it wasn’t to be!
Below are some details on our machine if anyone is interested:
Drivetrain: Powered by 4-CIMs, our 2-speed Ball Shifters (7.1:1/15.3:1) drive a 4-axle BRECOflex tank tread skid steer system. Our ~28” square frame with ~22” wheel base provides stability!
Launcher: Catapult-style launcher powered by fiberglass composite flat springs. Extremely high-powered launcher allows us to have a LARGE 10ft+ shooting “Sweet Spot”. We can shoot on the run (forward or backward). We use a “choo choo” style draw-back mechanism powered by a Banebot 775 motor, allowing for rapid reloading and shooting accuracy unaffected by battery voltage!
Collector: Pneumatically deployed, roller ball collector powered by a BAG Motor and VexPro Versa-Planetary allows us to grab a ball and quickly get it retracted inside our frame perimeter while NEVER losing the positive grip on the ball. 4 mecanum wheels assist in ball centering providing an incredibly wide “Capture Zone” allowing our drivers to collect balls at high speed! Pneumatically actuated upper and lower “Fingers” allow interference-free shooting as well as the ability to Catch passes from robots or Human Players more easily.
Controls: Wheel encoders allow for accurate driving control during autonomous. Optical sensor used to recognize presence of a ball to control collector functions and incorporate “Dry Fire” mitigation. Magnetic reed switches on cylinders allow positional feedback of our collector mechanism ensuring safe and effective operation of all integrated sub-systems. Mechanical limit switch provides positional feedback of the “choo choo” mechanism for precise and safe reloading of our launcher.
Software: Labview coded system with 3 unique autonomous modes, including a 2 ball mode. Numerous other functions coded to simplify driver operation including 1-touch Pass and Catch functions that simultaneously control multiple robot sub-systems.
Other: Our robot has an incredibly LOW center of gravity that is specifically constructed for the rigors of Aerial Assist game play. Our low CG and “Run and Gun” shooting allow us to get where we need to be in a hurry. We stand less than 32” tall and weigh about 110lbs!
Nice machine. Especially like the fiberglass springs… clean solution, very unique. Look forward to seeing it in Denver.
Great robot! I do have a few questions however. So why did yall go with tank treads? what are the advantages/ disadvantages? Is the turning really good? how fast does it run?
It’s my first year working with the tank treads so some of the other 1619 crew might be able to add their thoughts but here is what I’d say:
Advantages
1 Simplicity of the system - We don’t need a system of drive belts/chains to get 8 driven wheels…the treads actually dual-purpose as the drive belt and the tread material. Since we run the center 2 wheels on each side dropped, we can establish our overall belt length and then freely adjust our dropped wheel positions by simply relocating our drop wheels. For us this is further simplified by our 1x2 extrusion frame rail into which our drop wheel axles are attached…giving us almost unlimited options on our drop wheel base.
2 Cost - While this system would otherwise be somewhat costly, we are fortunate enough to have a great partnership with BRECOflex so cost actually becomes an advantage of this system for us. BRECOflex has been a great supporter of our program for a number of years.
Disadvantages
**1 Cost - **As mentioned above…for the general population, this system would be more costly than other available options.
2 Single Point of Failure - Unlike wheeled 6/8 wheel skid steer systems, a tread system must be direct driven on one of the end pulleys. This means that if a tread belt fails, you are essentially totally crippled on that side. With a wheeled system, you’d likely direct drive one of your dropped wheels, making a drive belt/chain failure less catastrophic. While tread belt failures have been rare in our teams history, they do happen (QF 1.1 in Utah this year) and it is almost impossible to predict when they might occur.
Turning Question - With our drop center design, turning is no issue for us. Without looking closely at our machine on the game field, you’d probably never notice that we were running tank treads simply by the turning dynamics.
Speed Question- Our gear ratio was selected based on acceleration and total required time to cover about 20ft. We assumed that most game actions in Aerial Assist would take place in this distance so we run Ball Shifters with a high gear (7.1:1) floor speed of about 12fps. The tank treads are essentially irrelevant when it comes to speed as we could have chosen any desired gearing and run as fast or as slow as we wanted.
Let me know if you have any other questions and thanks for checking us out!
Nice Gold panning dish!
Very beautiful bot. Glad to see you found a place in Colorado. Great machine and I hope to see you all make some noise up in Colorado. 
Classic Colorado.
Thank you for answering my questions! A few of my team members were die hard tread users, but for us it was an issue of cost and lack of knowledge about it. So I’m assuming yall have some pretty great traction!
I love the glass springs! Can’t wait to see this up close at CODE.