I’m relatively new here on the forums so this probably isn’t going to be a “normal” robot reveal. Come to think of it isn’t really a reveal at all, but there has been some talk about hanging in autonomous so I wanted to show off my robot. Currently we’re working with an efficient pushbot approach to the competition.
Drive: 4 high-torque motor x-drive
lift: 2 high-torque motor linear slide apparatus
The robot contains 9 motors currently, 4 on the drive, 2 on the lift, 2 on a forward pushing mechanism, and 1 more in an arm that extends out for object manipulation.
However, currently its most impressive feature currently is the autonomous lift we managed before Thanksgiving. The videos are attached below, so enjoy and let me know what you think.
I apologize profusely for the compressed format. These videos should be up on youtube today so I’ll link them properly then.
how long does it take to hang? can you do it 100% reliably?
edit:
after watching the videos, i personally would recommend a more traditional robot, because this robot, other than hanging this robot doesnt seem to offer much in the way of scoring, you need to find a way to either lift over the fence or push harder under it
While it can’t, nor likely will ever, lift objects over the fence, it was surprisingly efficient at our last competition at pushing stars under the fence. Our immediate plans include a mechanism to compress cubes to push them under the fence, and our long-long-term plan is to separate out the different components for a more modular design and then reattach everything back onto a more standard drive (probably an H-drive) for greater pushing power and simpler control.
The barely visible phone in the first video is displaying a timer, if any of you could make out the screen through the glare and wanted to check the time for yourselves. We tried going through the video frame by frame to get a precise time, but the video editing software our mentor was using crashed. The most precise time we got was sometime under 14.5 seconds.
Once again I regret dissing your “pushbot design” earlier. However, I do recommend switching to an 8 - 10 motor tank drive so you can really shove those stars. Have you seen @Cameron Schiller’s pushbot thread? this thing could be a powerful contender if you overpower the drive train and practice driving it like crazy.
Thanks, I did see that video. We are going to replace our drive, while keeping the old model intact, with a tank drive and we probably will use more than four motors on that drive, however, like I said earlier, I’m working with some extra mechanisms to increase the efficiency of the manipulation of objects and those use motors. I think we will probably be able to manage 6 motors on the drive.
2 motor lift
1 motor “arm”
1 motor forward pusher
2 motor cube mechanism
6 motors total
leaving 6 left for a drive.
I might be able to re-gear the lift for one motor, but I doubt the cube thing will work with one motor. It should require either two motors for power, or one motor on a ratchet with a second motor for a release mechanism. The only way I see having eight motors for the drive is by converting the lift for one motor, and hooking the arm up to the cube ratchet since we shouldn’t need to use both simultaneously. For example, one position of the arm (the arm, by the way, is the thing that moves the star in the video) is a locked ratchet while all other positions are a released ratchet, so we would close the ratchet, use the cube mechanism, and then move the arm away to reset the ratchet with rubber bands or something.
That is the hopeful scenario, but I don’t think I can count on everything working that way, and I’d rather use the extra motors to allow for faster motion, without sacrificing power, to solidify our autonomous at under 15 sec.
