BumBotics returns for their second year of Ri3D!
FRC alumni from the North Carolina district team up to build a robot in three days. Above all, we wish to be an inspiration to others. We will be streaming and posting all our finding mostly on YouTube with updates here. A big thank you to 7890 for allowing us to use their build space.
Click here for our YouTube stream
P.S. we were under the name of NimBotics last year, but we are just a bunch of bums. We thought it was more fitting!
It is the evening of kickoff! So much happened today and the Ri3D insanity has only just begun.
So, we’d like to build a fully functional and competitive robot and bring you along for the ride as best we can. Here is what we accomplished today:
After looking at game piece use cases and point values, we formed a simple, yet competitive robot strategy. The tasks we would like our robot to complete efficiently are as follows:
Things we are not attempting to complete:
We may experiment with climbing and/or autonomous code if time permits.
After coming up with this robot strategy, we ran through several iterations of mechanisms and ideas. After some debate over multiple ways of getting the job done, we have landed on a rough draft of what we would like our robot to look like. We will be building an elevator with a manipulator as opposed to an arm which was voted down due to the time constraint. (I imagine some teams will opt for this route and do quite well.) Some quick explanations with visuals of our CAD models can be found shown in our YouTube shorts. I will have better pictures and explanations of those posted here tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we plan to finalize our ideals and drawings, begin work and have a rolling chassis.
Best of luck to teams! And my Ri3D people: When you sleep - if you sleep - grab some for me too!
DAY TWO lets get this started. Here’s an update from your favorite bums.
As promised, here is a CAD related update on how the progress of our robot is going.
Let’s begin with coral.
As previously mentioned, we are looking for a coral scoring solution that will allow us to score on levels 1, 2, and 3 of the reef. Let’s talk about how we are going to do that.
I attached the photos of our CAD drawings and body in a response to this thread. Since this is a new account I am unable to add them in right now…
The primary challenge which we looked to tackle was the orientation of the Coral. This is because it is not symmetrical in 3D space. To combat this, we settled on loading Coral strictly from the human feeder station. The robot would be fed the piece in a vertical orientation (Slide the coral down the chute long ways as opposed to rolling it horizontally). The 35 degree angle of the feeder station and level 2 and 3 of the reef were huge proponents that influenced our decision making.
This is reflected in our design where we are going to have a ramp that allows for us to feed from the loading station which then funnels down to our Coral manipulator on the other side, which is essentially a set of roller wheels on a WCP based elevator.
PHEW! That was a lot at once. One piece down, one to go. Lets talk Algae.
For the Algae, we are planning on taking a pretty simplistic approach which revolves around intaking algae from the ground and scoring in the processor. To do this, we are going to use a motorized drop out roller bar, which will compress and hold the Algae against the bumper of our robot, allowing us to tilt the mechanism back, and outtake the piece to clear the 7 inch lip from the floor to the opening of the processor.
Once again, I will respond to this thread with the CAD drawing.
Anddddd that’s where we are. I kinda need a signature sign off. Maybe toodles or something…
toodles!
Being bums again 
Had a little technical mishap on the hyperlink to the live stream in the main post. Here is a fixed link to keep up with us on YouTube.
Toodles! (This is going to get real old real quick)
Welcome back for another update from your favorite bums here at BumBotics. Let’s go over a hopefully brief (foreshadowing) recap of what went on over the last 8 hours. Overall, the individual subsystem assemblies for the Algae and Coral are mostly complete.
Let’s get this started. First, the Algae.
For the Algae manipulator, we went through a few redesigns of the material we used to catch the ball so that it didn’t pass all the way through our roller bar once we starting in-taking it - a sort of mechanical stop after in-taking the algae.
Here are the iterations chronologically:
For a visual, reference our YouTube short here.
Soooo maybe I did lie about the hopefully brief recap… what can I say - we are bums! Anyway, let’s talk about Coral.
Elevator:
The elevator has come together really well. We’re able to reach L1, L2, and L3 with a single stage elevator (pictures to come). It’s being driven off a single Neo with a 48:1 reduction. We’re lifting it with dyneema cord and letting it fall with gravity as that was quick to build.
Future improvement: Actively driving the elevator down might be a good way to perform a climb on the cage. Like mentioned in a previous post, we may attempt this if time permits.
Outtake:
We have two sets of rollers located on the top and bottom of the coral. These are both driven off a single Neo. This works super well, and has the “touch it own it” mentality within the rollers. (Video coming soon!)
We will be sharing our CAD in the next day or so, which will showcase that geometry.
We’re currently investigating the possibility of mounting some Andymark Compliant stars on the top of our carriage as a way to kick algae out of the reef. This is an idea we saw from Cranberry Alarm Ri3D and liked for several reasons. Our tests looks promising. We think there are some competitive ideas just around the corner.
Intake
Our passive ramp and funnel system from the human player station to the elevator/outtake is currently in manufacturing. It’s a bit of a tight fit with the algae mechanism below, but not terrible. As with any robot, there are always a few hiccups when components are integrated.
That’s about it from here. Best of luck to all of you.
Toodles!
Day 3.
Let’s go over what we have done since our last update and touch on what the future will look like.
Hopefully this one is actually quick.
Algae
Since our last update with deciding between the various materials for the netting on our intake, we have spent most of our time counteracting the torsion fault created when we tried to pick the ball, as the two sides were not moving together. We believed that this was due to how we were not driving both sides of the intake, so we added a sprocket to the side not being driven.
Here is a cycle scoring Algae:
Coral
The main thing that we were also able to achieve is installing our hopper/funnel. There was a lot that went into it, through many material, angle, and design iterations, and we will put another video out on that individually soon.
Stay tuned for another video of us scoring Coral!
Closing in on the final stretch. Finishing up the bumpers and continuing to test functions up next.
toodles!
Day Three! And our robot is finished! We will stream later today at 5:30 est. to showcase what we’ve accomplished and answer questions while we present to the 7890 team students. Here is a sneak peak of our robot:
Throughout the afternoon, we will be posting longer form videos to our YouTube channel explaining specific parts of our robot.
The picture below displays some examples of how our robot evolved. We will talk through these things during our stream this evening.
Be on the lookout as we post on YouTube and CD condensed versions of the information we’ve gathered over the past three days.
Toodles!
Greetings Chief Delphi,
The following is everything we have gathered about Algae Manipulation.
First, we realized the algae was similar size to the cargo game piece from Destination Deep Space in 2019. Upon getting our hands on one, it is nearly identical - simply an overgrown playground ball. Any team still looking for good ways to manipulate the algae should consult this playlist of robot reveal videos.
Our Ri3D goals for algae were to remove it from all levels of the reef and to score them in the processor after picking up from the floor. Reef algae removal and algae scoring were different tasks in our head. We did not plan on containing a removed algae or retrieving algae from the starting position on a coral (You’ll see we lucked out for both of these in the end). We decided to go for a generic style over the bumper style intake. This design would only pick up algae from the floor (in the dark grey below), pivot up (so the light grey line and circle) and place it directly in the processor.
Everything went together perfectly and the design was solid. The algae was secured enough inside the robot where something would need to be majorly broken for the algae to escape. No defense or friendly robot bump would take our algae from us! Here is a brief video from that point of our build:
The Up-A-Creek Robotics 1619 robot and video mentioned can be found here. The best frame is at 1:07 and looks like this:
The Bumbotics team likes this 2019 cargo/2025 algae design. It is simple, works well. It doesn’t take up valuable space inside the robot frame perimeter and it is light which is good if you plan on hoisting the algae to the barge like Unqualified Quokkas with their high cycle robot.
On Monday evening, though, we noticed our intake might be long enough to reach the lower algae on the reef. We then successfully re-engineered the algae manipulator to obtain algae from the floor and the reef instead of the floor alone. This change from the original had us removing the net from our intake. Then, our robot looked like this:
Note: Our robot moves faster, but it was considerably slowed down in our software at this time for sake of testing.
Physically, there isn’t a huge difference from before. First , we removed the net from the intake. Then, we added a roller bar just inside frame perimeter and some thin transparent plastic material to catch and hold the ball as shown here:
After we made those changes, the algae would not stay in our robot at all! We could pick up from the reef no problem, but from the floor, the algae would be shot out the top and go bouncing across the room. Check it out:
This was because the algae could contact our intake wheels 100% of the time while it was in the robot. These intake wheels encourage movement all around them instead of only toward the inside of our robot. To fix this, we added a churro to the back side which faced our robot seen here:
This churro allowed the algae to be moved by the intake wheels when we wanted, but once the algae was most of the way in our robot, the churro prevented the algae from touching the intake wheels and causing the algae to fly out the top like before.
Oh! One last thing. The intake has a bent churro near the base of the arm. That’s from a slight spacing error which made the algae touch the top of the processor hole. It was a little sticky going in, but after one of us introduced our foot and some weight to it, the problem went away!
And that’s about it for the algae manipulation.
3 minute video explanation of this manipulator.
Stay tuned! Almost all of the BumBotics team are back at college now, making our schedules tight. A post covering everything BumBotics has gathered about the coral will be out this weekend.
Be sure to check out other Ri3D teams! There are so many awesome ideas out there already and all of them could use some tweaking and improving - especially ours - by you students! They can be found on the Ri3D 2025 REEFSCAPE Masterpost.
Toodles!
Where I can access ur robot cad?
I too would love to see the CAD, preferably OnShape if it is available. GREAT design. Simple but very efficient.
