Greetings! Welcome to the 2025 season build thread for team 4829, the Titanium Tigers!
This is the first time in our 11 year history that our team is doing this, and we hope it helps those that read it! Our season started out with a bang, as our kickoff event went spectacularly, and we began brainstorming immediately.
Our concrete plans for the season so far are: to build a testing robot on the drivebase from our our off-season robot, which we took to Doyenne East and Thor East in October, by week 4, in time for programming to do their magic, and have our first iteration of our competition robot done by week 7, and have it ready for our first competition! And our final goal is, of course, build the best robot ever!
Design/CAD:
We started the season by modifying our existing elevator design in CAD to make it more structurally and and efficient. We are basing our design on team 4414, High Tide’s design from the 2023 season.
Our recent design changes focused on enhancing functionality, precision, and structural integrity. We updated the gussets to align with the new channel design, and elevator side channels were modified to extend the maximum reach from approximately 43 inches to 83 inches. We added a new carriage stage to facilitate scoring across different levels, while bearing blocks were redesigned to be inline, inspired by High Tide’s setup.
Channel holes were adjusted to accommodate tensioners and additional components, with hard stops and sliding mate limits integrated into the CAD model. Structural improvements include tube plugs for added integrity and the addition of a 4th carriage stage within the 3rd stage, spaced ÂĽ inch apart across all stages. Components like bearing blocks have been ordered to support these upgrades. And to streamline mechanical adjustments, all STEP files were uploaded to a shared drive!
For the process of picking up and placing coral we designed a mechanism that would be some sort of compartment (likely rectangular) with coral under constant tension from wheels, with extra wheel rollers fitted in a conical (only horizontal) way with a plate below them to prevent the coral from falling. This would give some extra flexibility with the intake process. With this design, we are able to easily score on the 4th level of the Reef. Due to more power sources, it can pivot and turn rollers faster, meaning the design is also resilient and durable with a small chance of losing coral However, the design isn’t the smallest, especially vertically, as it requires more power sources for pivoting and powering rollers (e.g. motors) and may take more time to align, increasing cycle time. The design may not guarantee scoring (May be more prone to falling off) and might be heavy, but this is just speculation.
Our secondary goal is to remove algae from the reef and score it in the processor, and maybe score high on a barge with a pivot. We are considering 2 options: Option 1 has horizontal rollers, which offer a compact design, secure grip, and fast intake and outtake. Some downsides of this design are that the mechanism being too heavy at the top of the robot, it might take up a lot of space, and a limited intake angle. Option 2 is a shooter-style mechanism (similar to option 1, just a different orientation). However, we have some concerns about the weight, slow cycle times, limited accuracy and processor scoring. Additional ideas include vertical rollers for easier alignment and potentially faster intake and accuracy, though they may take up too much space or be unstable.
Mechanical:
To begin, we first disassembled the existing elevator we built for our off-season robot. Concurrently, we began CNCing the drive base for the new robot, and made the G-code for a new elevator design we will be building.
We bought all of the wood we need to construct the Barge and the Reef. A problem we faced with this, is that we reused measurement lines for pieces that were on the same stock of wood. We remedied this Re-measure the piece dimensions and creating space between different pieces on the same stock board.
Another setback we faced was because of the winter storm that is currently hitting a lot of North Carolina. We weren’t able to meet on Friday or Saturday of this week, meaning all of our mechanical and electrical work can’t be done. There’s no way to work around this, but we were throwing around the idea of creating a ceremonial dance to appease the weather gods!
Our goals are to: cut all of the remaining pieces to completely build the Reef, begin CNCing the elevator channels, and begin prototyping!
Software:
So far we’ve begun on Creating subsystems with AdvantageKit, rewriting our simulation code, and thinking about potentially adding cool features.
Link to the code: GitHub - TitaniumTigers4829/robot-code-2025: This is the code for our robot in the 2025 REEFSCAFE competition!!!
Some features we added during the offseason are GitHub build workflows, threaded vision, and limelight vision simulation with PhotonLib. These additions allowed us to explore and integrate more advanced features into our robot, while the GitHub workflows have helped us keep our code organized. We assigned each member a subsystem to work on with them implementing AdvantageKit to the subsystem. This has helped our members get some practice with creating subsystems and have a better understanding on how AdvantageKit will help us with troubleshooting any issues the robot may have.
Some subsystem we’re currently working on are:
- Elevator
- Intake
- Swerve
- Vision
We’ve begun rewriting our simulation code for it to be more organized and functional, although this is still in development. You will hear more about this in our next build thread! Hopefully we’ll have a robot to be able to test out our elevator code on. In addition, hopefully we will have some field elements and positions laid out for pose estimation testing with last year’s robot. The reason we are doing this is to (on top of potentially trying out new features) confirm pose estimation is robust (has several sort of “back up” modes), consistent, and accurate.
Electrical:
Since the design team has let us know that we’re using pneumatics this year, we’re cracking down on research (as the electrical team hasn’t seen pneumatics in many moons… or ever!). In addition, we’re finishing up battery assemblies and we have ordered 5 new batteries this year (hopefully more to come soon) and are getting them ready for competition.
An issue we’re running into right now, unfortunately, we screwed up (no pun intended) on the battery connections. This happened because we decided not to use the configuration that the battery company provides pieces for, instead we went for the one on the Zebracorns guide, Battery Upgrade 2.0.pdf. After completing the batteries, we realized we were supposed to use nylon lock nuts and not the standard kind, therefore, we had to undo all the tight connections we had just made! Some were so tight, they just wore down when we tried to screw them back up so we had to dremel the screws off. Fun times, but nevertheless, we persist! We are now waiting for captive nuts to be delivered and we will CNC more grasshopper nuts soon!
Our biggest general issue would probably just be like realizing we have a lack of something and then it taking forever to be ordered, thereby pushing our schedule back (eg. battery lugs, nuts, and 4 AWG wire strippers). Also, our organization could use some touching up. We did not do enough cleaning during the off-season, but at least I now know exactly what we’ll need to restore once the season’s over!
In all, our plans for next week are to complete the Reef, finish the battery assemblies, begin prototyping, finish CNCing all the tubing we need for the elevator and drivebase.