4886c Robot Reveal "Wallie"

VEX V5 General Discussion VEX Robot Showcase
1

So after seeing the Wasabi wallbot, I decided I wanted to make my own. V1 of the robot was made in about 3 days, with the walls being very light and easy to lift.
The V2 of the robot, shown below kept the same basic design, but it included thicker and heaver walls.
We use a PIC brain, with all 10 motors taken up. The motors on the base of the robot look like this, http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/ab223/Rob22342/VEX%20Robotics%20-%20Gateway%20Season/DSC09653-1.jpg with 4 3 wires and 2 393’s driving and then in this picture 1 393 and 1 269 for strafing. These gave us enough power to push other robots.

One thing that really set us apart from the Wasabi wallbot is that we used pnumatics to lower an “outer shell” of the robot to the ground, which in turn raised the driving wheels above the ground. The outer shell also had wheels on it, kept in place with lock plates to add traction to the robot, making it harder to push when the outer shell went down.
Up

Down

The walls were able to fall down once the pistons retracted, which moved a bar out of the way. It was assisted by a rubber band on each side, and when combined with the weight of them, they fell pretty fast. Each wall also had a small driven omni on each side, which allowed us to drive the wall against robots pushing the wall.

At the second meet it went to, the Green Mountain VEX Challenge, I was picked by the first seed which included team 4886a, Aperture Science and team 44, Green Egg Robotics. At this time, my robot would hit its breakers, since we didn’t (still don’t have one) have a power, so while trying to install one, the code got messed up and it didn’t compete in the finals.

Finally, the reason I’m finally revealing this is because today I found out our B team could push us, with the walls down and pushing back, so I started designing V3 2 days before our Scrimmage.

Any feed back on the robot design would be helpful! I sadly don’t have any videos of it in action, the one is bad quality and is mostly aiming at me anyways.

2

So hows are you able to score on the 30 inch or just on the 10 and 20?

3

I was able to score in the 10 by putting match loads on the arm and when they folded down it would score 1, getting 2 points. I took it apart today however.

4

Your wheel base would be harder to push if you had your motors driving more wheels. Our robot has four 393s driving six wheels to give it more traction and overpowers other robots that have the same motors as us but with only four wheels. Your main wheel base runs two wheels. Because of that, our robot would push yours like it could push any other.

Aside from that, however, I admire your design. Good luck in your future tournament(s)!

5

come on its 11.5 3/4 of the way through the season and people are still making this mistake come on

6

I like the wall bot concept. :slight_smile: As well as the clever name.

For V3, are you going to completely redesign the robot or simply make big changes to the current one?

And do you have any video of the robot in action so we can get a better idea of how it performs?

Either way, have you considered using linear slides (new or old) to make the arms come out? They could be spring loaded and on a ratchet, released by the pneumatics. And I suppose you could use mecanum wheels instead of the Omnis so that all 8 drive motors contribute to whatever direction you’re moving. (Assuming you don’t move diagonally much)

I will say though I like the fact that your wheels are together in the center instead of being separated by a large distance on each side of your robot. (Like Wasabi’s is?) and that your robot is intentionally heavy.

All in all, I think if V3 is robust and sturdy you’ll be good. :slight_smile:

7

Yes, being pushed by more powerful team is one of the reasons I’m moving to V3 design. V3 has more drive wheels, along with another amazing design! And thanks! V3 will be released in a month or so! :slight_smile: But also, our drop down outer layer catches in the field, so its harder to push. (meaning the tread on the wheels help keep us in place.)

8

Yessss, complete redesign! Linear sliders are a big part of it. And all 8 drive motors do contribute to my direction now.

Yes, having all my wheels in the center is good, I like it. My robot was SOOOOO heavy.

9

Awesome :slight_smile: Sounds like it will be a good robot!

10

Well I currently have 1 more day to finish V3, which right now only has its base, motors mounted and stuff. But adding weight is easyy, and on this design ever easier! You’ll be wow’d once I release this one!

11

Love that you were inspired by our work and continue to build on the concept. Definitely keep us all updated on how V3 works out. We found that the basic wall bot design has some major strategy flaws that could be easily exploited by smart teams that take the time to think about the whole thing. This is why our new version (hopefully) will be even better.

12

Go find your school’s Physics teacher and have him or her explain why this doesn’t make sense. Honest.

13

Nice wallbot! :slight_smile:

The only constructive criticism I have to say (and I could be missing something) is that it looksto me as if all the wheels are driven at 1:1. Which would mean, as you have 2 wheel sizes (4" omni and 2.75" omni) that are being driven 1:1, they will be travelling at different speeds. But again, I could be missing something…

All in all, nice robot! I like how you are using the pneumatics to lower the “wings” down. Just don’t drop them on another robot :wink:

~George

14

Yes! Your wallbot was an amazing site the first time I saw it. V3, which will be built all day tomorrow for our Saturday scrimmage, will have some flaws, but I defenently keep you updated on it. It looks really cool when it extends. :slight_smile: By the way, are you on 1492z?

Even though this isn’t toward me, our Robotics mentor happens to be our physics teacher :slight_smile:

Thank you! We really love our wallbot. :slight_smile:
Yes, we do drive 1:1, and yes with 2 different wheel sizes they travel at different speeds… We were to lazy to gear them up, so we left them like that.

Hehehehee… about the dropping of the wings… well at our first competition we almost yanked all the wires out of someones robot, so thats why V1 had to go. But the dropping also allowed us to score low goals when they dropped first!

15

I’m actually the driver for 1492X, but our whole team shares all the same parts, tools, batteries, etc. Our team divisions are also very loose and we constantly have members switching around. The current Z design was built off of a random idea I had during a meeting (even though I’m on the X team) and has probably been built by 7 or 8 of our 14 members even though there are only 4 official members on the Z team.

We find that this kind of team organization has been key to our success, because while it’s impossible for 14 members to be building on a robot at once, with 5 people building/programming and 14 minds thinking, there is just so much more productivity and creativity.

16

Yes, that is how our team has been doing well also. We are all one big group, designing stuff for one another. I merged off of the A team to build Wallie, and then today all of A team (Me, Owen, and Fido) built the majority of it. I’m the coach of A team, and the Driver of C team, which is sometimes me, but is also the half time driver of A team. And yeah, with everyone switching off, when theres a day when only one B team member comes, we are all working on one robot, which is how our newly made D team has a near complete robot (except that the drive base isn’t attached to the scoring part yet.)

17

You know it doesnt really matter. Some people say 10, others say 12. It doesnt make a difference