Wildstang gets a lot of visitors in the pits at competitions, looking at our robot, seeing what we did, asking how we did things. This is great, but only for those at the same competitions!
This year, instead of trying to put some information down in words and pictures, I wanted to try something different and put together a series of videos detailing the design of different parts of the robot. So we gladly introduce our design videos: After The Game.
I managed to grab a couple of juniors and seniors who were heavily involved in the robot design and build (and who hadn’t run away on summer vacation or off to college!), and talked through our robot design - what we did, how we did it, and what changed over the course of the season. But wait, there’s more! Since this was all shot after the season (and our post season), I asked them to reflect on the season: what they thought worked and what didn’t, and what they would do differently next time.
Hopefully the video format gives some more information than we could get across in text and pictures alone. The aim was to give a good closeup look at our robot design (just like talking to us in the pits), but also benefit from our thoughts once the season was over.
As we all prepare for next season, I hope this provides some inspiration to other teams to look closely and reflect on what they did this year and make lots of notes, so we can all hit the ground running for the 2013 season.
(Any feedback on the video format welcome, so we can make that better too.)
Well I know I’ve done that before. Thank you for posting these videos! They look like they were a lot of work but they will be so helpful and interesting. I’m going run through the whole playlist…
These are fantastic, I just watched all 6. I love that you talk about all the problems and how you solved it. So many times it seems like the power house teams just know how to do it right because we don’t see all the iterations that happen in the background.
Thank you for putting this together, excellent job.
Thanks for posting this. I really love in the chassis section the slow motion turning hop. This is a great way to document the pros/cons of descisions made during the season.
I really liked how you talked a lot about the failures of the initial designs, and your solutions to all of them. It really shows that you have to continually redesign and fix the weak points of any robot to stay on top in FRC.
(It’s interesting that you removed automatic tracking later in the season. We did that too).
Us three. I suspect this was fairly common. Early game analysis resulted in a desire to be able to shoot from anywhere on the field. However, after playing the game it became clear that in most cases, shooting from a few specific locations like the corners of the key and the fender is a more foolproof approach, and it does not necessarily require automatic tracking.
This was truly inspiring and educational. It really makes you realize that even the “powerhouse” amazing teams arent perfect. They change many things, and are never done, after the 6 weeks. This really taught me that you shouldn’t be afraid to completely change a design in the robot, at any moment.
Excellent videos! Very informative, even for those of us who have competed with your team. I wish more teams would do these sort of breakdowns of their robot, as it’s always very interesting to see the different solutions groups (especially successful ones) come up with to the same problem. For example, I had never heard of that particular method of tensioning. We may have to prototype it after this coming season!
I just have a small question about those drive modules-- how do you assemble everything within them? Like, do you put all the chains and stuff together and then put it into the frame and the stick the axles through (excuse my rough description)? Or is there some other method that you use?
Thank you so much for making these! I’m in awe of the though that goes into each component of the design and how elegantly each is implemented. You make me want to make my team better and make it to champs this year.
I urge the community to see powerhouse teams not as teams to hate against for being so good but to look on to as examples of incredible dedication and elegant engineering.
As a few said before, it really is incredible to see how drastically your design changed - especially before champs! Wow!
Thanks to Wildstang for posting these videos! It is great to see teams accepting the challenges put on by JVN and others. The FIRST community will only benefit from learning about how you came up with your designs, what worked, did not work, and would be changed for the future. I will definitely share these videos with my team. Thanks for sharing these wonderful resources!
Excellent job with the editing Steve! First time I’ve actually seen most of these since filming.
We had to assemble each bearing block around the main extrusion. When all of the mounting hardware is removed, the bearings are actually the only thing holding the carriages onto the extrusions. Then we put in everything else (axles/sprockets, gearbox output shaft), and then put the chain on. Gearbox was last. This is probably not the most efficient way to do it. These were inspired by our 2011 modules, but those were much easier to assemble because those bearing slots in the extrusion were cut out all the way to the ends so we could pre-assemble each bearing block. We changed that on the 2012 iteration to give the frame a bit more of a solid mounting point as the modules were part of the frame this year.
Let me try address all the questions/comments in the posts…
As with anything, there is a lot to be said for experience in knowing where to start, but there is also a lot (possibly more) to be said for the experience in being able to iterate quickly, identify problems, and be confident with change.
The high-speed (from a point & shoot) helped out a number of times through the season. Even though the design was done at that point, it allowed us to react to the issues we were seeing ahead of time, rather than see what happened on the field if we left it as it.
We took continuous improvement to the extreme this year
Continuing from the last point… No, don’t be afraid, but make sure it is a very carefully considered change, and one within your means/abilities. If you’ve spent 6 weeks designing and building your robot, make sure that change is the right change to make!
Champs alone would be a whole extra video :ahh: …
While I wasn’t thinking of the challenge when doing this, I would love to see more teams do this in the future. Any team! Apart from thinking back on the season, these aren’t much more than what you’d get if you talked to us in the pits. But, it’s now available to everyone. I didn’t really get to see anyone in the pits this year, and would love to see in detail what some other teams did.
Thank you for spending the time to put together these videos. I love seeing the details in the design of successful robots.
I thought the lexan mounts on your first intake roller were brilliant. Allowing it to flex on impact makes a lot more sense than trying to make it strong enough not to break.
The drive modules are pretty cool too. The wrap around bearing mounts look like a good way to accomplish adjustable center distance chain tensioning. Were they made out of C channel or a piece of rectangular extrusion? What are the advantages of enclosing the chains? We built a belt drive in the off season with belts inside a square tube, and it made things pretty challenging to assemble and repair.
The drop down landing gear seemed like a great way to get over the barrier. Between the landing gear and the wedge you built for championships, which one do you think was more effective?
Thanks for posting these. I took a look at the #6 video (shooter), and several questions came to mind, if you’d be willing to share some more detail:
with the 7:1 speed reduction and the 550’s free speed of 19300 rpm, the top speed of your wheel would be somewhere around 2700 rpm (neglecting gear losses). What was your operating speed for shooting?
what kind of speed control algorithm did you use? e.g. PID, bang-bang, voltage compensated open-loop, etc
how long was your spin-up time from 0 rpm to operating speed?
did you keep your wheel spinning continuously during the entire match, or did you spin it up when ready to shoot?
