Before our tournament on Saturday (get hyped), I’d like to present a short clip of our robot as of 10/29/2016. I apologize in advance for the vertical video, I literally had my iPhone balanced on the handle of my snow blower in my garage. Major improvements have been made to the robot, such as a 4 pronged intake. This platform was just for prototyping, really. Resetting the catapult (the action you see where the lift raises up) has also been automated now to maximize efficiency.
Questions about the catapult mechanism will not be answered now, but at a later date sometime after our tournament, so stay tuned. I will say that it is a slip gear mechanism. If you do manage to figure out how it works from what you see in the video, good for you, but please don’t post it. Thanks.
So we have some autonomi outlines written, utilizing PID control on it (special thanks to @jmmckinney ), but we have yet to find the correct values to make it work. Shouldn’t be too hard to do, but nothing should ever be too hard to do. We have a history of long nights on the Fridays before competitions.
I really like the use of the instant drop mechanism.
I am worried that only having two prongs won’t allow for enough scoring though.
Is there an advantage to it that I’m missing?
In the OP I had said that we added two more prongs to the side. This platform was purely for prototyping, and was never intended to go to competition. We also just didn’t have enough standoffs when this was made, but now we do.
Sorry, I don’t know how I missed that.
Can it score cubes as well?
Also, I suggest having it automatically reset to the lifted up position so that you can shoot immediately after driving under the objects.
Keep reading the OP.
We can not throw cubes as of now, but rather we plan on operating it as a dump bot for cubes and just lifting them over the fence. Our concern is the hanging hook getting in the way, though. We don’t have a field to practice on, so we don’t know how the fence will affect that.
On a side note, I have a history essay due tomorrow that I’ve barely been working on, so I’m turning this off for the night.
Hmm… a little bit sassy tonight aren’t we
In all seriousness, I wanted to post the video, and I do have a history essay as I said, and typing in an explanation is much quicker than video editing.
I like the instant drop mechanism! We had one we prototyped ourselves (video here: https://example.com/RfGr; not a very great prototype), but it looks like you’re doing something different. One concern we had with the instant drop was that stars might get caught under the forklift while it was launching. It looks like your drop is fast enough that that might not be a significant risk, however.
To echo what others have said, I can’t wait for the competition footage Good luck on Saturday!
Good luck on Saturday!