The videos we put up are slightly misleading-- it looks like a shorter height than it actually is. On our video shooting into the scale platform, we were actually shooting at a relatively realistic vertical and horizontal distance, which is difficult to really see looking down the stairs, but which we measured out before shooting.
We actually did hit around 8 feet once we were on 4 775pros, with our semi-sketchy wood prototype. This was good enough that we decided to move forward to settle the question of whether it is or isn’t viable to shoot.
Additionally, it’s a robot with a great fallback-- failing at the scale still leaves us with a robot that can easily do the switch and exchange, which are an essential part of the game.
Glad you liked the intake videos! We’re hoping it will work as well as we think it will on the final robot.
No. Our intake is designed to intake a 13" side of the POWER CUBE-- if it intakes it the short way we have a bar that kicks it down so that a square side is facing the ground when it is loaded for the shooter.
The accelerator wheels are 9:1 off of AndyMark RedLine motors, and the exit wheels are 3:1 off of VEX 775pro motors. We put the 775pros on the exit side because we had the empirical data from VEX’s dyno testing available for them, while similar data is not to be had for the RedLine motors. Since there are occasionally very significant differences between the posted specs and the empirical specs (as seen with the NeverRest), we felt more comfortable putting the better characterized motor on the exit wheels. We’ve been very happy with both motors, however, and are pretty sure we’re just being oddly cautious about this specific weird thing
I noticed that a TON of the RI3d teams are using the AM green compression wheels to intake the cubes. Have you or anyone tested the difference in wheel color (and by extension durometer) in intaking the wheels? What of the AM 4" compression wheel options do you think would work best?
We’ve added our Scouting Strategy and Prototyping Information white papers to CD-Media-- you can grab those here.
We also have a video of our final shooter assembly firing off of the robot, which can be found here.
Hope you guys enjoy, and as always if you have any questions feel free to let us know here!
I wish we could test other compression wheels! We used the green ones because AndyMark sent us a care package that had four of them in it, and they were awesome. It’s definitely a thing where it’s possible one of the stiffer wheels may be better. We would have loved to try the blue or black wheels, but we didn’t realize we actually had the black ones until we looked for more compliant wheels for our shooter.
We think there’s more work to be done as far as the shore of the wheels, combined with the elasticity of the intake, and whether the wheels are compliant or solid (eg, AM Stealth Wheels or Colsons). We unfortunately just didn’t have those parts to test.
Any chance you could do a quick test to see the difference between the green and black on the intake? Your design is awesome, very similar to my prototyping, I’m just curious how those wheels handle (as my compression wheels haven’t arrived yet… maybe we didn’t even order the right ones)
Wow, I really did not think that shooter would work. I’m impressed by the height and I assume its consistent enough to reliably get in the scale. Great job on that coming together!!
Thanks for all your hard work to not only make these dope robots but also create great documentation for teams to use to drive their own designs!!
On the final robot, this turned into the edge of the shroud. We’re deep into final assembly but hopefully I can get you a video tonight. The concept though is simple-- since our transfer rollers are along the bottom half of the cube, if the two two inches hit the bar, the block pivots around the rollers and pulls it down into the square orientation as it goes through the gap. Like I said, a video will explain this better.
It’s extremely easy for us to swap over to black wheels and we have two extras that we found this morning, so I should be able to get you a video tonight. Like I mentioned above, we’re in the middle of final assembly to try to finish before noon, so non-critical changes are a no-go until tonight.
We won’t have any videos out tonight-- those should be coming tomorrow. To hold you over, we do have a white paper on the tournament strategy we would take with this robot. You can find it with the rest of our white papers, including our strategy document, prototype information, and scouting thoughts, here.
Additionally, we got the vinyl on our robot… it’s looking pretty decent.
We planned to add pancake cylinders to pop it up for driving around, but didn’t get the chance to add them yet. Currently the driver has to only run over the bump backwards, the scoop is on a hinge
