Team 1114 - Simbotics, 2024 Simbot Skyfall 1.0 & 2.0 CAD Release

[akoscielski3]

Hall of Fame Team 1114 Simbotics is thrilled to release the CAD models of our 2024 robot, Simbot Skyfall, in both versions!

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Simbot Skyfall 1.0

Our first iteration, Simbot Skyfall 1.0, competed at the Newmarket District Event. We ranked 6th overall and served as the 5th Alliance Captain, selecting teams 4343 and 7480 as our alliance partners. We finished as the 4th place alliance.

After careful evaluation, and a long discussion we decided that the current robot design was not going to deliver the results that we wanted. The sliding mechanism of the shooter slowed down our cycle times, the shooter itself lacked accuracy, and the climbing mechanism was too complex to deliver consistent results.

You can view the original design for Simbot Skyfall 1.0 here:

Onshape

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Simbot Skyfall 2.0

In preparation for the McMaster District Event, we redesigned and rebuilt the shooter and climbing mechanisms. Our focus was on creating a simpler, faster, and more reliable robot. These upgrades significantly improved our performance. Huge thank you to Barlow, for helping manufacture our new sheet metal components for the redesigned robot very quickly! Also, a big thank you to 33, 5460 and 3467 for their inspiration and the Open Alliance community for their help in this redesign!

McMaster District Event: We were the first pick of the 2nd alliance, partnering with 5409 and 8764. We finished as the 3rd place alliance, losing in the last round before the finals!
Ontario Provincial Championship - Science Division: With further improvements, including greater consistency, as an alliance we finished tied for 5th place in our division alongside 3683 and 2702. Post-event, we integrated vision tracking, enabling the robot to detect and correct its trajectory for game pieces during both autonomous and teleoperated periods.
World Championship - Milstein Division With all these refinements, Simbot Skyfall 2.0 became a strong contender at the Championships. Partnering with alliance captain 6800 and teams 1591 and 4400, we competed as part of the 5th alliance. Despite a hard-fought loss in a penalty tie-breaker we finished in 3rd place in our division and we were proud to bring home the Excellence in Engineering Award!

Here’s a match from the Milstein playoffs where we scored 30 notes (4 auto, 26 teleop): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjV1pbrMerE

You can explore the improved design for Simbot Skyfall 2.0 here:

Onshape

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We’re incredibly proud of the journey Simbot Skyfall took us on this season and are excited to share these designs.

Thank you to our sponsors!

• Title Sponsor: General Motors
• Gold Sponsors: Ontario Power Generation, FIRST Canada, District School Board of Niagara, West Coast Products, Vykan, Rotary Club of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and Go Beyond Group.
• Silver and Bronze Sponsors can be found here

And finally thank you to our School, Governor Simcoe Secondary School, including the staff and teachers who supported us, parents, students, volunteers and mentors who made this all possible!

[Kevin_Leonard]

I love how compact you all made this concept. Amping out the rear of the shooter is genius - how did you make sure it would work before building it? Was there a prototype or was it just a lot of sketching to get the geometry right?

Also love the way you made sure the robot would stay climbed for long enough - simple and effective!

[akoscielski3]

Thank you! We spent a considerable amount of time discussing and refining the position and angle for amping, especially since we didn’t have the opportunity to prototype. Instead, we relied on sketches, like the one below, to predict the motion of the note and arm. Again, we need to give credit to the teams that helped us in this redesign, some of the angles and wheel spacing dimensions were referenced from other teams since we didn’t have the time to prototype everything.

One challenge was determining the note’s angle in the arm section. We debated the placement of the rollers and the required arm angle. While the arm angle could be adjusted later, we made our best estimate for the note’s position. To aid the process, we integrated a light sensor in the arm, allowing us to partially eject the note, align it with the amp opening, and then fully eject it to be scored. After some programming adjustments, this setup worked well.

Additionally, it was crucial that the rollers were geared correctly since the note was being rotated through the arm. The outer rollers needed a higher surface speed than the inner ones to ensure smooth movement. If they rotated at the same speed, the note could get jammed. We applied this same gearing principle to our original intake system.

Here’s a sketch that demonstrates the gearing setup:

So in this case the outside rollers should rotate 1.513 times for every 0.487 rotation of the inner roller. 1.513/0.487 = 3.11 gearing ratio between the top and bottom roller.

After we built the arm, we noticed that it wasn’t staying up long enough to count the climb. So we had a mini competition between team members to design and build a prototype for the robot to stay up on the chain. This was the winning design! We had to play with how fast the arm rotated because we had to “Swing” onto the chain, otherwise it wouldn’t latch on the chain.

[Doug1]

What an elegant design! Thank you for sharing it. Our Team 1557 is small and our kids (on team 1557) are just starting to learn CAD. I have exported your V2 model and shared it with them, hoping that they will get an appreciation for what a complete CAD model of a robot ought to look like.