We have completed enough of our robot to finally showcase how we are gonna climb to 30 pts and dump frisbees on the top for 20 pts.
This week we will be finishing the wiring and plumbing and doing the final Cg adjustments to make it work.
To begin, this link takes you to a simulation we performed on the CAD robot to show everyone how we expect it to climb.
Our other video shows us doing the first 2 levels to make sure that the robot, as built, performed as required. You will notice weight cupcakes zip tied all over the robot to make sure our robot is at the proper weight and Cg.
We plan to have the robot climbing under its own brains this weekend and when we get video of that, I will post it to this topic.
Enjoy! We look forward to your comments and questions.
…wow…speechless. If you can get that to do it fully on its own it will be beautiful to see. How far are you guys along on the dumper part and does it stay legal?
The dumper is done and just needs plumbing. This weekend will include a test of how it performs. This weekend is gonna be our full up system test if we can keep from running into show stoppers.
It easily meets the geometry and weight rules and stays within the 54" cylinder. All our valves, tanks, pistons and such are rated 150 psi working. As far as we can see from reading the rules it should stay legal.
We had a strategy meeting at the beginning of our season and discussed the maximum points we could deliver given our limited resources. During that strategy meeting we figured a consistent 50 pt robot would be a good alliance teammate for nearly every game. The rest of the time we will be playing defense.
We have been focusing on reliability and robustness because the climb and dump is such an all or nothing approach.
This year has been very exciting for us. My fellow mentor and I personally like these years where it is extremely difficult to do it all and forces specialization.
For instance during Rack and Roll we concentrated on the ramps for our robot and were very happy with that consistent 60 pts.
This was essentially our strategy for almost the first half of build, but we chickened out. Great job! I think you will be a first round pick at every event you attend, and definitely a second round at Champs, if you have the climb and dump consistent enough.
It was designed during week one when it still had to stay inside a 54" vertical cylinder. It easily stayed inside the original 54" vertical cylinder, including the “swing” from one bar to the next. The rule change at the end of week one allowing the cylinder to stay “robot oriented” didn’t affect us.
This is an excellent strategy. I wasn’t understanding why you would go with such a complicated dumper until I read this, and now it seems brilliant. Can’t wait to see all the systems in action together!
Have you calculated how long it will take to fill your tanks needed air volume between matches (using only one legal compressor) and how long the climb will take? Turnaround can be 10 minutes or less during elims…
Is it illegal to have pre-loaded air tanks and then just swap them out after every match? Then you could be loading them back up during matches and then just get a rotation just like teams already do with batteries.
A strategy designed around intentionally taking penalties is a good way to get a red card. It’s one thing to occasionally take a protected zone penalty or similar during a match and have it turn out to have a positive effect for your alliance (tubes in lanes in 2011 is a good example), but building a robot around doing so will violate the perennial “spirit of the game” rules.
Still, it’s not a good idea to design a game where breaking the rules helps you. GDC should have written the rule so that each extra disc is penalized according to the maximum amount of points it could score. White discs cost 3 points, and coloured discs cost 5.
Better than calculated we have run a full up systems test of the pneumatic system because we were very aware of the 5 minutes you have in the later elimination rounds to reset your robot.
We are running at 4 minutes 30 seconds with the legal big compressor. Volume of air, Cg, and weight were some of the big design drivers in order to get the robot we designed to work.
We felt comfortable showing off our design in week 4 because for someone to copy it at this point they would pretty much have to scrap everything they have. The whole robot was designed for this one purpose and just adding a couple of lift cylinders and a lot of air storage to an existing robot won’t get you the 30 pts.
We won’t truly know how long the climb takes until we can do a full up system test this weekend, but we were shooting for 30 - 45 seconds maximum.
Yes, that would be considered illegal. All compressed air must be provided by the one compressor used for the robot (either on-board or off-board, not both), and be charged but the robot battery while under cRio control - essentially, you have to have your robot sitting there in order to charge your tanks.
Further, I would question the safety of moving, handling, and mounting air tanks while they are fully pressurized.
