Would a "ball-vac" be a plausible idea for moving cargo around?

Technical Pneumatics
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After our team brainstorming meeting right after reveal, me and some others in my group had an idea for a “ball-vac”. It would attach to some sort of lift and suck balls/cargo in (and out) to pick up and place them. Would this be a plausible idea?

UPDATE: We actually found a suction cup (with a hole in the middle) and attached it to a Shop-Vac and lo and behold it actually picked up both balls and disks.

EDIT: I forgot to also ask this… Would it, if this idea is “plausible” be a surefire way to launch the balls/cargo into their proper places?

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That doesn’t sound incredibly surefire, but it absolutely would work! Mercer Island had a vacuumbot last year, if you’re looking for inspiration.

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I believe that there was one team in 2018 that used two vacuums to pick up the cubes but it didn’t work so well, but those were milk crates with fabric and these are rubber balls so it could be different.

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Our (Team 25) 2010 robot used a “ball-vac” to possess and control the soccer ball game pieces that year. It was surprisingly effective at retrieving balls out of corners.

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Our team used the vacuum last year to move power cubes. It certainly would work better with these rubber balls and disks than it did with the cubes.

If we do end up revisiting it our suction cup implementation will be potentially different than what we used for power cubes.

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We had good luck prototyping a vacuum pickup in 2014: https://youtu.be/tPNvIXTAd4s. Our. “vacuum cup” was a cut-down Lowes bucket. It didn’t have a very compliant lip, but it’s hard to find big vacuum cups locally.

We’re also having success picking up Cargo balls & Hatch Covers this year. If we go with the vacuum idea, we’ll have to replace the 110VAC motor with a FIRST legal 12VDC motor.

I recommend a “real world” test: rolling a ball towards your vacuum cup. It need to get pulled in instantly & not bounce away.

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Cargo balls work much better than power cubes did with the system we made last year.

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Using a vacuum cup to pick up a ball and move it mechanically sounds fine.

Trying to move a ball in your robot by ‘vacuuming’ it in a tube of the diameter of the ball does not sound fine. These balls vary greatly in diameter with just a little pressure difference. I would expect the balls to be tolerance +/- .75 inch at best in a match. You could not vacuum a ball in a tube that is 3/4 inch larger than the ball unless you had some kind of amazing air mover.

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This is great! Do you happen to have a video of using the suction to hold a hatch panel? Thanks!

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No, because we haven’t tried it. Most of us dont think it’s worth it. It would require multiple small suction cups that we dont have on hand.

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Consider the bowl is curved. Even if the ball was smaller; the ball would simply recess into the bowl and would still create a seal.

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The disk can be picked up (*gently) with a 5 inch can (which can also suction the ball.

I think the balls will be >12.5" so I think you could reasonably use that for an outer diameter of a cup. Because of the inner hole (6") of the disk, I would have a second inner seal making the suction area donut shaped. For me, I’d make the inner diameter 9", which gives 1.5" of tolerance to line up on the disk.

Compared to the 5" can, the 9 to 12.5" donut would have about 3x the surface area. We have a single shopvac (with something like a 550 or 9015 motor). I’m curious about the troubles of 3d printing a vacuum housing (1) and impeller (2). Would consider strongly running two vacuums.

Don’t have a supplier, though I almost found an aluminum cake pan that would work: https://www.amazon.com/Gobel-Nonstick-Deep-Savarin-France/dp/B0006BDD84/ref=asc_df_B0006BDD84/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=216945417004&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14290729416904194707&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9023864&hvtargid=pla-393480708436&psc=1

Just kidding, of course. I’d make the shape in a completely different manner. My real idea is just a round piece of material with an o-ring groove. Because of the ball curvature, I would attach a cylinder that retracted this round piece allowing full vacuum on the ball. It would be the ball release mechanism too. And you could add a second small cylinder to release the disk.

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We actually found a suction cup (with a hole in the middle) and attached it to a Shop-Vac and lo and behold it actually picked up both balls and disks.

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1557 used a vacuum to pick up and load balls into their shooter in 2014. It’s definitely doable, what really makes or breaks it is how well your implementation grips the ball and how likely it is to drop the ball (literally and figuratively) when subject to forces like turning or being rammed by another bot.

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