You’ve probably never heard of us before, but we’ve really grown over our two years in vrc and we thought it would be a good idea to reveal our robot. We didnt want to at first, but then we saw the green egg robot and realized that it was time. We built this robot in a little more than a month and we can say for sure that it is absolutely the best work we have ever put out.
The idea was to have a scoring wallbot. We didn’t want to use any extra motors or pneumatics for the expansion, so what we did was used a free sliding track that would allow the mecanums to separate the robot to about 6 feet wide. We used pneumatics on a claw and two 269s for the lift. Due to the design we realized we had to have a linearly extending arm. We considered a six bar but we went with a chain bar with a single stage extension powered by rubber bands. The arm lifts at the start and the arm extends at that point.
The drive is a mecanum drive, with 4 393s and 4 269s, one of each per wheel. They are geared for a direct drive. There is a center portion with wheel encoders that holds up the tower and claw.
Under testing the robot has worked very well and doesn’t lose pushing matches with other test bots. Autonomous is about 7 points in either zone.*
Mecanums strafe way too slowly, making it not as efficient. I’ve found that with wallie, strafing is faster and I can out strafe our mecanums. Are you attending worlds?
We considered a standard omni holonomic but decided against it because it took up way too much space for us. The strafing on our bot is not too slow for us and it opens the wall within a few seconds. The normal omni holonomic was just way too wide for us to fit a claw and “inner bot” in too.
There are 15 linear slides on the robot. We almost didn’t have enough. At first we thought they weighed way too much, but we’ve found ourself adding even more on the outside wheels to help with traction.
Here is an EARLY picture of the robot (mostly) open, with a bunch of barrels in the way for dramatic effect. Fully open it is a bit wider than the area it is supposed to block, so it can sit on one side of the gate and center goal to keep others from pushing it too easily.
Lol that is close to the dream robot for this year’s game. If I had enough time and had pneumatics, I would use pneumatics for the lift like 599D and then the two motors for a NZ styled intake. That way it can score fast and block. I like your robot though. It looks solid. Good Luck at worlds!
From this picture it looks a lot like a bot we have in our club. But…
When I get to this picture it looks nothing like it.
Anyway, great bot. Can it be pushed easily?
Will you stick the barrels and balls on your robot like that to help with the weight, or are you just showing us how long your bot it.
This robot has never played a match. It takes about 4 seconds to expand. The pics are from about two weeks ago, as such they do not reflect that it does in fact have additional weights on the outer slides. There is probably about 5 pounds over either side. Everything is functioning smooth. We found that it needed the extra weight over the outside edges because once it expands they need weight on them for traction, it can’t push without them.
We tested it against two squarebots with 4 269s direct driven on each. With all 8 of those 269s pushing against our robot, they could barely push us if we didn’t even drive against them and if we drove against them they were easily overpowered and pushed back without our motors stalling.
Those barrels on it in the picture were just “decoration”. It definitely weighs enough as it is.
They weighed a little more than normal squarebots, but they would probably be stronger with a bit more weight. But they would probably stall then too rather than just spinning their wheels a little, right?
no they would have more traction and might be able to push better
and it would also make it harder for you to push them
just some more realistic tests to keep in mind
I understand why they would be able to push better, but rather than spin their wheels without moving anywhere, with more weight wouldn’t they be more likely to just stall instead, allowing us to push them more easily? Either way we think that it has more than enough power to win pushing matches. Even the GER bot, which seemed to be a bit underpowered by that video, was able to keep them in the iso.
I appreciate the unique design. Well done. And I’d love to see a picture of it expanded all the way.
