The purpose of this post is to share our CAD models and codebase for 2024 MARS competition robot, MARVIN XVII, with the FRC community.
The released 2024 MARS MARVIN XVII CAD model consists of a sheet metal drive base built around MK4i inverted swerves, with a low-profile L3 gear ratio for avoiding defense and allowing faster cycle times. Our design features a completely integrated shooter, intake, and trap-capable system in a compact form-factor. This is made capable through the use of a singular pivoting 2-DOF arm, allowing MXVII to score speaker, amp, and trap with one mechanism. For the climbing portion of the game, we decided to use telescoping spring-loaded arms, utilized in a climb-to-base system made possible by position-controlled passive hooks that lock once the climbers are completely down. Once the climbers are down, MXVII’s center of gravity allows it to passively tilt forward towards the trap objective in endgame, allowing for easy, consistent trap scoring.
After its demonstrated success of its versatility and capability Charged Up, our programming subteam decided to continue using Java to write our codebase, also continuing with a command-based system. For robot localization, we used 2 Orange Pi powered cameras. Through the combination of Team 3015’s PathPlanner trajectory planning with real-time odometry from our AprilTag localization, we were able to push our autonomous performance to new heights, implementing versatile note-pickup starting locations to accommodate our alliance partners and be as competitive as possible. Outside of the autonomous portion of the game, we also utilized AprilTag localization to allow for auto-aligning to both Amp and Trap objectives to reduce driver error and heighten the competitiveness of our robot. We used a Google Coral on a Limelight for neural network detection of note position that allowed for consistent intaking as well.
The code for our 2024 competition robot can be found here: GitHub - MARSProgramming/MXVII
The CAD models of the MARVIN XVII robot can be found here:
Google Drive - MARVIN XVII
We hope everyone has a great kickoff, and MARS will see you at Finger Lakes, Smoky Mountains and the FIRST Championship this year.