I would like to start by giving a little info on my team for those of you who do not know us. We are a third year VEX team comprised of five sophomore students. We hail from the great state of Wisconsin and have participated in tournaments around the Midwest this season. We all dedicated a ridiculous amount of time to our bot this year, and we have been very successful in our competitions. This year was an awesome journey for my team and I, and we are looking forward to ending it with our friends and family in Anaheim.
With our team departing for Cali in just over a week, we wanted to take time to give you a preview of our World’s bot. I can almost promise that you have never seen another bot like ours, because, frankly, we have never seen another bot like ours. Our design is the brain-child of all our members, and has had very little outside influence from other teams. As such, it is a very unique design compared to most bots this year, and is over six months in the making.
Drive comprised of 4 393 motors geared internally for torque.
4 direct-driven omni-wheel drive.
Chassis is designed to be as narrow as possible, allowing it to fit around and over 11.5” goals. Makes blocking at 11.5” goal impossible once our drive surrounds the goal.
Virtually impossible to tip.
Drive speed: approx. 3fps.
The Lift
Unique vertical linear-slide lift: This design was adopted by our team when we realized how simple our lift could be. Our lift only has a range of travel of around 16” yet allows easy scoring on all goals while being extremely fast. The limited motion of our lift also reduces strain on our motors and requires a very small amount of hardware to implement.
Lift powered by 4 269 motors.
Lift reaches maximum height in approx. 2 seconds.
Lift is kept in sync through the gearing of our lift motors at the back of our bot. This gearing ensures that each half of the lift rises at the same speed.
The Intake
Maximum capacity: 6 objects. (Generally no more than 4 are used during competition, but more can be added if the situation requires)
Dual tank-tread design allows for easy match-loading and field pickups.
Intake works with any object orientation.
Objects move through and out of the intake in about 2 seconds.
Other Mechanisms
Top flap: One of the simplest and most effective mechanisms on our bot is a hinged flap on the top of our intake. This flap forces objects out of our intake in the proper direction by pushing down on the objects as they reach the top of the intake. This flap is held down by elastic and acts as a “door” for objects leaving the intake.
Pneumatic descorer: Features a retractable pneumatic descorer which allows us to remove objects from any goal on the field. This mechanism is particularly helpful in the last 30 seconds of a match when we are required to remove an object from the top of a goal to fit our doubler or negator.
The Program
Our bot has 7 separate autonomous runs. We are able to make decisions based on the lay of the field during autonomous and select different steps to make take advantage of situations on the field. We also use many sensors in our autonomous to ensure consistency.
Other
Our bot is designed to complement any partner, but is best suited for the interaction zone.
Our bot’s specialty is owning all the goals in the interaction zone. We have decided to not reveal the exact process of this strategy, but when it is implemented, it basically locks down the entire interaction zone and puts a huge strain on our opponent.
I hope you enjoyed seeing our bot and learning a little about our team. I will be adding more pictures/videos in the next few days. Please ask any questions you have about our bot, and please be sure to come see us at Worlds.
We’ll see you in Anaheim!
May Your Axles Remain Ever Straight,
The Members of 1200E New Divide
Hey Buddy I hate to break it to you but there is a whole school who started on early in the year with that type of bot their name is Berkner R.A.M.S. they are from Richardson, Texas and ther VRC# is either 136 or 1366 and the letters spell S T E M They have a whole lot of practice with theese bots look out!
Very nice robot! I like the ingenuity that came with the descorer, and I can see much time and thought has gone over this design. Had a few questions:
How long does it take to intake a game object?
(I know you said success, but specifically…) How have you won any competitions?
Overall, this is a great robot! I have only seen one design like this in my region, but was not executed very properly. Hope you have great success at world!!
The first time I saw a robot with a similar mechanism (vertical lift in a chute with a flapper) was a “Hangin’ Around” robot in 2006-7. Everything old is new again. You’ve made good use of more recent VEX material and parts, though. FVC team 3632 didn’t even have omni wheels, let alone aluminum, Lexan, tread flaps, the new style sliders or 393 motors. (It was even before the slide rack gearbox, so the lift was driven by tank tread bolted to the slides.)
Thank you for your questions. This design has been through about a dozen revisions, and it has been very well thought-out.
I assume this is referring to taking a game object off of the field. It is hard to put a specific time on the process of intaking, because it depends a lot on where the object is. The intaking is usually very fast, (simply a process of lowing our lift and running the treads). The only time it is slower is if there is an object in a corner which we need to get into open space. It is tough to see in the picture, but we have a polycarb piece on the bottom of our bot which aligns the objects in the proper spot for our intake, making the process a lot faster.
Short version: it is usually very fast. I will post a video tonight.
I assumed this question would be coming ;). My team’s journey this year was definitely a challenging one. We were tournament finalists 2 or 3 times this year, and we lost to the same team at every tournament. At another competition, we were knocked out in the quarterfinals due to factors outside our control. At our second to last tournament, we went to three matches in the finals with the team that has been beating us this season, and still came up short.
FINALLY, at our last tournament, we beat out 60 other teams with our previous opponent as our partner.
When all is said and done, our team has received one Tournament Champion award, 2 Tournament finalist awards, and one Innovate award. We were also nominated for one Excellence award.
Thank you for your compliments and good wishes, and I hope to see you at Worlds. Please come stop by our pits if you get a chance!
The good old days, right? My team has never actually seen another bot like this, but we were told another team from our school used a similar design a few years ago. Thank you for the compliments.
Nice robot, I don’t like using linear slides because of their bulkiness and slow speed in general, but it seems like you’ve made it work to near perfection from your description!
I have a couple questions:
How do you deal with intaking a barrel that is diagonal in relation to your intake?
How do you deal with objects stuck in front of goals?
How do you deal with objects stuck right to the side of goals?
Not exactly a question, but your microcontroller and wires seem very exposed at the back of your robot, have you moved your microcontroller in a new iteration?
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by diagonal. If you mean a barrel that is slightly tipped, this is not a problem. Our intake works with a barrel at any orientation. We prefer not to intake if the barrel is kind of “twisted” under the intake, but we can easily tip it into the correct position.
Objects in front of goals do not provide any more of a challenge than those in the open field. Our intake can pick up an object that is right up against a goal or wall, but, if necessary, we can easily throw the object into open space with our chassis.
Objects directly to the side of goals can be a little tricky, but we can usually swing them out with our chassis and then intake them.
Good observation! Yes, our wiring has been completely redone, and there are no more tempting loose wires sticking out
Thank you very much for your questions and compliments and be sure to come see us at Worlds!
fixed, can you please get rid of that post? I apologize to anyone reading this thread, there’s no way an argument should have started on here over one poor choice of word.
It really looks like you have updated your bot a ton since Wildstang Regional. I really enjoyed going against you guys, and looking at your bot at Wildstang. You have one of those, “Wow, I have never seen that before” bots.
Will you have recent practice/skill videos up soon?
Hopefully I can see a match you are playing in on the Webcast of Worlds!
I assume the torque is referring to our drive. We geared our drive for torque because we wanted to have a little more pushing power, and because it worked better with our bot’s weight. I am not exactly sure about the weight, but I will try to find out this week.
Yeah I meant twisted as if the barrel was on its side (able to roll around) and if you look at your intake as a square from the top, then the barrel looks like a diamond.
I mostly meant if you could score on goals with objects in the way for my second two questions.
(It was even before the slide rack gearbox, so the lift was driven by tank tread bolted to the slides.)