AURA's Introduction to Matlab (World Cup Robot)

We recently competed in the Robot World Cup, held in Auckland, New Zealand, facing some very tough competition against some of the best high school teams in the world. While we are a college team, we followed all of the high school rules for this competition (other than alliances), including only using 10 motors and no custom electronics.

This was our demonstration robot, but we lent it to another alliance when one of their robots was seized at customs in LAX. It went on to perform pretty well! More photos and videos available at the link just below the image.


http://www.aura.org.nz/archives/955
Feel free to comment/post below if you have any questions!

Also, if you missed our other reveals so far this season…
-https://vexforum.com/t/auras-introduction-to-java-world-cup-robot/19790/1 (Java)
-https://vexforum.com/t/1x-aura-high-school-legal-gateway-robot/19543/1 (Quiz included)
-https://vexforum.com/t/aura-early-gateway-prototype/19279/1 (Early prototype teaser)

And if you’re still a little confused about six-bar arms…
-https://vexforum.com/t/guide-to-six-bars/19334/1

Perhaps this is just coincidence, but did you really name your robot after the Mathworks software?

  • Sunny G.

That would be a pretty odd coincidence. Some our other robots from this season have been named Java, Python, and Assembly. We don’t have a protocol for naming the robots, its just kind of ended being whatever programming language people have been learning recently, although I think we are going to avoid calling a robot C or C++.

That would be funny.

Looks like you have a similar design to the other AURA robots.

Looks solid, the collection mechanism looks like it works great.

I love the amount of wheels you have on your drive train!
Looks nice.

Good luck this year!

Thanks for the (World Cup Robot) tag,
otherwise I was expecting a technical software tutorial.

Thats a Chain-based 4-bar? Someone was asking about that earlier.

Love the drive train! I guess you put more wheels than I have put on one of our concepts. But we have something that might have more types of wheels :wink:

And I have always wanted to build one of those kinds of arm… I need to get around to is one of these days. Maybe we can build a mini HOG with one :smiley:

  • Andrew

All you are using for your intake is, 3 HS Sprockets, 3 HS Chain loops, and Tank Tread flaps?

That’s what it looks like, but could be mistaken.

Also, how many game objects can your robot carry/hold?

Thanks!

Naming robots after programming languages is an inside joke - never released, but we had a spot as well - I want to name all the robots after the languages in the notepad++ library.

The extra wheels resulted in this being the most stable robot I have ever driven, unlike the first version of this robot (spot) which had serious tipping issues.

The lift isn’t a four bar, it’s a simple lift with chain to keep the intake parallel with the ground.
Edit: See this nice explanation here

The chain/tread that went on the sprockets was made up of repeating units each consisting of 3xHS chain links, 1x"Conveyor-belt Base link" and tall conveyor flaps.

Yes, only 3 HS sprockets (30 tooth)

Its capacity was 3-4 objects. Because it was originally intended as a demo bot, we didn’t bother making its capacity any more than 3-4

A note on the drive train: the 10 wheels were originally a joke but ended up sticking

Does 10 Wheels help at all with stability, or movement?

I would think stability. Also, are they powered by a 393 motor?

I have NEVER seen a 10 Wheel drive train before in VEX.

It looks very neat.

In most robots with chassis which are 35 holes long, stability is usually not a problem. However, 10 wheels is slightly more stable, just from being heavier. I noticed that it is more “responsive” than some of our other robots, as it tends to drift less (as in when you let go of the controls, the robot stops immediately).

The drive was 1x 393 and 2x 269 on each side.

In terms of objects lift, we found (not on this robot) that lifting 5 objects put a lot of stress on the lift motors (when lifting at 5:1) and so we rarely collected 5 objects during match play.

I think 4 game objects is going to be probably the MAX objects a robot will carry because of the size, and weight.

If someone knows of a video or has a video of a robot that can carry 5+ objects, can you post the link here?

Thank you!

A lot of the robots at the Robot world cup could carry 5/6. You can see them in the videos on the Auckland Robotics youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/aucklandrobotics

That is awesome!

Thanks for the link to the youtube channel. Love the videos!

Also, do you have any videos of your robot in a practice match or something?

Is there something in particular that you’re looking for that you would only find in a practice match? I don’t see why you would want a practice match video when there are already 20+ actual competition match videos available. If you can tell us what you’re looking for specifically then we can try to find you the correct video.

If you’re referring to this robot (Matlab) in particular, we don’t have any videos of it competing (or practising, or anything). We lent it to another team and the member of our team who does all the photograpy stuff was busy recording our team’s matches. So we have footage of our two serious competition robots, but not of this one.

OK.

That was what I was wondering.

I just like seeing a robot close up moveing around the field and scoring asap.

Thank you though.