http://puu.sh/nni1
This is AURA1’s interaction robot, for the College Challenge (field shown here)
This image shows a relatively early prototype. Here is a video of it in action: (The title and description were designed to conceal the fact that this was a serious prototype. We did this instead of making the video unlisted because we wanted to make sure other teams wouldn’t do the same thing and then beat us with it)
On the full version, the bucket is about as long but has proper walls, so it has a much greater capacity. All the other obvious problems that you can see are fixed (for example, slow intaking) and there are some extra features that we aren’t disclosing just yet :p. You’ll be able to see these at worlds, after which we’ll do a full reveal.
Specs for the current version:
Intake: 2 x 393
Lift: 2 x 393 plus more than 50 rubber bands; 1:5
**drive: **8 x 269; 1:1.5 for speed; tank
Capabilities:
- can gobble most of the stack in the first <20s of autonomous
- discharges its entire payload (including both colours of objects) over the gate in a massive elastic-powered dump. The lift cannot come back down afterwards because the motors cannot drive against the elastic, so the robot spends the rest of the match half upside-down.
- has an effective 10-motor drive after dumping, because the intake is on the ground and acts as a very large wheel.
- can hoard opponent objects in its overturned bucket
- can still deliver match loads and doublers/negators when inverted
Besides hoarding, the strategy after the dump is to play defensively and try to win the doubler fight, using our 10-motor drive. Our isolation robot should then be able to outscore theirs because it will have access to more objects.
The robot has performed well in testing and in practice matches against MESS, MITE and AURA2.
We will be doing pre-worlds reveals of our other robots at a later date.
