We call it the Clean Sweep design because of its similarities to 677 and Free Range in Clean Sweep. But we should probably come up with another name or it will get confusing haha.
Why not just call it a ramp. The one word names seem to catch on a little more quickly haha.
Please explain to me how the 7 bar linkage works
Take a look at the side view of the robot in post # 3. The 7 bar linkeage is essentially 2 4 bar linkeages attached together.
I like your design, however, it might take a while to pick up each game piece because the motion would be: lift, suck in, then drop the lift, then on to the next tube and the whole process starts over again. I hope your driver skills are good, otherwise you might have some trouble getting the game pieces quickly.
I do like how many game pieces it holds, and I do like your intake and your H Drive.
Actually it’s extremely easy to drive. I’m pretty sure they can just drive forward and intake game objects. Then they can deposit 5 or 6 objects into goals
Strange, our robot is functionally identical to yours at the moment (not for long), yet in our CAD drawings we have about 9 inches from the bottom of the arm to the front. Probably because we have an 18" tower and only a single 18" length for the arm.
Have you considered lexan slats instead of 5x35 alu pieces? It might be lighter and that way you can also add sides to your ramp easily.
Let’s see if anyone thinks of a pick up that isn’t like this one. Round up had claws and needles; maybe one or two other designs will prove popular.
A claw could work early in the season if it’s built well enough, but with the advent of doublers (now that we have actual reason to put more than one game element on a goal), I predict that by the end of the season indexers will be winning.
By the way, from where I’m standing, you guys who say this is “the needle” are missing a really obvious idea. Your current designs are fairly similar to said idea, but with one important difference…
Are you talking about a design like this:
https://vexforum.com/gallery/files/2/0/9/1/418_left_elevation_scoring_1.jpg
That’s an idea that I’ve came up with for Gateway.
I think 418 actually came up with that one… 
I bet it could work nicely, it would be pretty positive which is always good.
~DK
I was actually thinking of something different, but our team’s looking into the design in that picture as we speak. It’s simple, efficient, and already has about three hundred proofs of concept. I like it.
Put it this way; that’s one of two ideas you could have proposed that would have fit my description…
we had thought about that at first too
but there were some drawbacks
- the barrel is 5"x6" as opposed to the 6" sphere
this would make the tensioning of the treads trickier than the 418 robot in the pic - the game objects this year are HUGE so you would probably need an extending top as well as quad? tank treads to make sure the objects dont fall out the top
- the game objects this year are more slippery and with more curved surfaces (sphere and barrel) this might make grabbing and holding objects trickier than elevation
if you can tweak the design so the above is not a problem, then it would be a GREAT design
Okay, so to sum up the robot’s progress at the tournament, it had some troubles early on and we were working out a couple kinks, really just replacing the 2-Wire 269 Motors on the rollers to 3-Wire Motors, adding surgical tubing to the 7-bar, and also changing the physical stop such that game objects didn’t get stuck under the 7-bar, as well as swapping out the roller flaps for much larger ones. We flipped over forward once, because 24A’s drivetrain was too short for our very prone to tipping robot. The robot flung itself to be half over the wall, and attacked one of our newest team members.
The robot functioned quite well once we finally got the hang (not quite, but at least a little) of driving it. This didn’t really happen until around just before the finals. We were ranked 7th after the Qualification Matches I believe, and were picked by 24B, who also picked team 2588A. We went on to do quite well, but played in a lot of close matches, including the Final match which we won by 1 point, 16-15.
First video I have of the competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozqmkiyPoLw
Second video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5WSEZj3EIA
Third video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBo3lDastcg
Things we realized:
- Fast robots are not needed, and usually undesirable. The field is too small for them to be useful.
- Storage would be helpful, and tended to be.
- Being able to push around other robots would be helpful as well, as a lot of contact occurred.
- Doubler and Negator Barrels were very important, especially once it got down to the Finals. (Negator didn’t tend to be used much at all. We used it once in the very last Finals match, and used it successfully, being able to negate an entire 30" Goal of the blue alliance’s game objects.
- The Barrels are difficult to pick up with most designs, except for a claw, and some others. Balls were much easier for our robot.
Aside from the capacity limitation, those are implementation difficulties rather than design issues.
But back to Legomindstormsmaniac’s stuff: congratulations! A couple questions:
- What were the average scores like?
- Did anyone go for the pyramid? How frequently?
- How early did most alliances open the gates?
Also, I’m surprised you’d say speed is generally undesirable. In my opinion, speed (independent of other factors) is always desirable; it’s only when it comes at the cost of precision or power that it’s an issue. The precision problems can be fixed with software and drive practice, so it’s really just an issue of how much you want to be able to push people around. Which, I agree, is a lot–but there’s something to be said for speedrunning the isolation zone.
- Average scores were probably in the 6-4 point range during Qualification matches, with a few matches going up to ~13-n later in the day. In the Finals most matches had a winning alliance score of ~13-16.
- Not sure what you mean by this. I’m assuming you mean the large pyramid stack in the middle, but don’t know what you mean by “going for” it. Sorry. :o
- I don’t really think there was much of an average. Meaning the average would be in the middle. (between the start of autonomous and the 30 second mark) Not many teams lifted them in the beginning of autonomous, but we did once or twice. Not many of the teams waiting until the 30 second mark either, except near the beginning where we had to be reminded to lift them.
Alright, it’s late/early and I’ve had a long day, sorry I should have said a fast drive. 
The reason I say this is that while your statement is true that with drive practice and software a fast robot can still be controllable, I’m talking about a 1:2 drive with 4" wheels kind of fast. Since many times in Gateway I’m sure the Gates will be left down most of the match, the Zones are small and not much room. If you have a 1:2 gear ratio on your drive but you never even get to its top speed, what’s the point? This is pretty much what I was trying to say. Speed as far as a manipulator and arm goes, yeah make it fast or whatever, being able to lift and score quickly is great. Just speed of your drive I’m not seeing any super over-geared (Round Up style, if you know what I mean) robots being so much better than anyone else who uses their motor power elsewhere or instead to be able to push around better.
~Jordan
- Sorry, I should have been more specific. Did teams attempt to knock over the pyramid early and take tubes from there, or did they use match loads first? Did anyone try moving the pyramid’s tubes to isolation?
Wow! It’s awesome to see videos of the game this early…really enjoyed those. Thanks so much for posting it. Great job on the robot too. I like your clean and light-weight looking build.
In general, how well would you say your intake rollers performed? Where you able to fill up your entire object holding bay by just having the rollers on the bottom? Also, do you really need two motors just spinning the intake?
Hehe that was a fun little robot to drive around
Something that this picture does not show is the modification we made at World’s that year. We mounted a linear slide under the center c-channel using the latex tubing for tension that expanded our cube hold up to 9 or 10 cubes if memory serves me right. As for tension maybe a dynamic tension system?
you would need a tread tension system like team 1103’s clean sweep bot
the treads would just morph around any object’s shape and size (football, green ball)
I think the pyramid was knocked over quite early in pretty much every match by the Interaction Zone robots, and no I don’t believe anyone moved any objects from Zone to Zone while the Gates were still down.
You’re welcome, and thank you!
Our intake rollers didn’t end up working the greatest. We need to work some on those, as the Barrels were very difficult for them to pick up. Yes, we were able to store around 3-4 objects in our hopper, and only had problems with them falling out if we tried to pick up a Barrel or something with 2 already in the hopper. Then sometimes one would slip out. As for using 2 motors, we actually had to swap them out for 3-Wire Motors after a few matches because of them overheating so much. We should have geared them down, as they were probably faster than they needed to be. I still think that for our design we may need to keep 2 motors, however.
~Jordan