In Singapore, everything is somewhere, but there is no easy way to find it. I could probably find motor controllers and the like, but it is a lot more work than in the states. In addition, Singapore might be small, but it can still be a pain to get around, and there aren’t many centralized markets for that sort of thing. There’s a few, but most of the team doesn’t know what to look for. In addition, the mentor situation is different than on a lot of teams, so we don’t have consistent access to expertise, and they don’t really know where to buy stuff either. Let me put it this way: Singapore does a lot of contracting, less in-house stuff than in the States.
It depends. Can you dump in the 1 point goal with your design? If so then I would advise building a pickup. If not then I would say build a hanging mechanism.
EDIT: When I consider your somewhat limited resources and time I would probably have to lean towards the passive hanging mechanism.
Yeah. I was thinking of ways to implement a pickup, and the only practical thing would be some sort of spatula system. We can dump in the low goal, but I doubt we could score enough to make more than 10 pts. If we can implement it, we will, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m more confident in a passive hang as well as a blocking mechanism actuated by our elevator.
Yeah my team has many resources and we’re still finding that picking up frisbees is a difficult challenge.
Something I like about your robot is that you receive discs from the feeder station in the back of the robot and then push them out the front (as far as I can tell from the picture). This will allow you to move back and forth across the field without turning. This is a feature that I feel like a lot of teams have missed this year, you’d be really surprised how much time it wastes to turn around every time you want to cross the field (especially if you don’t have a second robot to practice with). If you guys can use a nice smooth path across the field and just go back and forth as fast as possible I think you could make two or three trips of four discs to the 1 point goal (when you’re not acting as a mobile feeding station) which equates to 8-12 points along with a passive 10 point hanging mechanism will make you score a decent amount of points (enough to win most qualification matches).
Another thing you could do is hold 2-3 discs in autonomous and drive up to the 1 point goal and dump them in. It shouldn’t be to hard to program and you can tune it at the competition on practice day.
I suppose. It really depends on the design of the shooter robot. We would be better off picking up off the floor than trying to line up to a mobile feeder station. Another thing is that you would have to drive up to the shooting bot (you can’t just position the robots end to end like you could last year).
Yes you can, it just depends which “ends” your trying to line up. Our hopper can accept discs from all 4 sides a robot like the one shown in this thread could easily feed us from the side.
Just a question. How should the sides be shielded? They’re pretty vulnerable at the moment, and I’d like to shield the tower somewhat. Is polycarbonate the best option?
Also, we will be changing out the chutes from acrylic to polycarbonate. Is this necessary? Also, what should the hanger be made out of? Will plywood work?