Introducing…
[FONT=“Impact”]Sheila! [/FONT]
[FONT=“Arial”]Watch as she demonstrates her superior might! Be flabbergasted and stupefied by her massive payload. Her incredible alignment devices allow her to quickly position for a score. Her epic de-scoring capabilities allows her to change the tide of the round in a staggering display of ingenuity and precision. [FONT=“Book Antiqua”]BEHOLD TEAM 3018![/FONT] Pure awesomeness unleashed![/FONT]
(This is a round from a tournament we competed in recently. I used two different camera angles of the round, but the video is whole and uncut. We demonstrate a few of our robot’s capabilities, if you want to see what else we can do you’ll have to come and see us.:D)
We’re looking forward to competing with you all at the US Nationals and Worlds. Please stop by our booth and meet Sheila!
offset double 4 bar for pickup in front, drop on the wall in back.
Very nice rear alignment fork to provide aim and offset distance to wall goal!
maybe with a little more work, you could use it to descore wall goals?
External form of snorkle with expandable capacity, can descore by slurping up previously scored tubes, lift up/over and drop them in back, then swing forward again to rescore.
Have you considered taking the time do the descore drops under the ladder?
What is the button on the front right drive rails for, arm down limit switch?
What do you use pneumatics for, just the rear fork?
I’m always surprised that side shields like that are not dq’ed as functional.
This is probably the best video edit I’ve taken the time to watch, thanks.
Too bad there isn’t a standard overhead view of all games.
Your robot looks great. Our team’s first attempt at a roundup robot was very similar to this with an expanding cap for the tubes (but we couldn’t score behind ourselves.) One thing that worked well for us that you could try is instead of using intake rollers, string latex through the holes in a medium sized high strength gear:
Also, you might want to think about keeping the back fork up all of the time instead of moving it up and down with pneumatics. You could probably just start the match with it straight up and then have it fold down like 1107B’s descoring fork.
Yes, we have. Due to the size of the Tube Cage it takes too long to try to fit it in the ladder to drop tubes under. We usually drop them next to a wall or in a corner and they get piled up pretty badly.
The buttons are on the two flaps inside the robot. The flaps are for aligning our robot with the low post movable bases. The buttons are for the auto. period and detect when the base is in the “cradle”.
We use the pneumatics for the fork in the back as well as part of the front that you can’t see very well.
No, we want it to operate this way. I don’t know if you could see it or not, but in the lower right hand of the video (just after we pull our 10 tube switch out) we use it to “spank” off the opp.'s tube, then score on top of it. We can effectively de-score wall posts this way, as well as use it in other inventive ways throughout the round.
Well, for us anyway, they do nothing more than keep prying eyes from seeing our internals as well as make the robot look professional and just plain good.
[FONT=Times New Roman]Absolutely fabulous! Your introduction in the thread leaves no room to doubt that we need to take a peek![/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]The video and your robot are awesome. The sturdiness of the tube handler impresses me the most. How much is controlled by the program as opposed to the joystick would be interesting to know. Remove two, deposit two… Perhaps, your team will share after the World competition?[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman]This is definitely one video that I will be showing to my newly formed robotics class. They HAVE to see this![/FONT]
How are they functional? I’m pretty sure they’re just laminated paper taped to the robot frame, and they don’t appear to be interacting with game elements.
Yes we have, but we normally are switching out, and when we switch out it is faster to just drop the tubes. The buttons are on flaps inside of the robot and are for alignment purposes with the bases in auto and driver modes. We use pneumatics for the fork, as well as another mechanism you can’t see very well in the front.
Well, what you might not have seen was that we use the “spanker” or officially the HiPAD (High Post Alignment Device) as both a descoring mechanism as well as an alignment device. the power it has when springing up knocks tubes off the post. It’s hard to see, but in the lower right-hand corner of the video right after we pull a 10-tube-switch-out, we spank a red tube off and place 2 blues on the post.
Actually a lot of the work is done by the robot. During the round, we have buttons programmed to suspend our cage at different heights (using a PID controller if you know what that is) for different tasks. We also have things like having the robot drive at half the speed when a certain button is pressed for more precision when we need it, and a break function that stops the robot when the robot is aligned with a base so we don’t tip it over.
Well, for our robot, they do nothing more than look professional and keep prying eyes from seeing our internals.
Thanks! about 1 hour with iMovie. Yeah, i wish… we just try to have someone always recording from the stands.
excellent interesting “twist” you added to the generic “outer pickup” mechanism
i love the way you can descore and score immediately and hold 10 tubes!
and i KNEW that somebody will make the “spanker” to descore tubes off the wall
overall excellent robot but the speed seems to be a bit slow (no doubt to compensate for the 10 tube cargo)
(In all honesty, though, our B team got the idea from watching the Waiakea team’s robot, and our A team doesn’t use it, so I guess we can’t really take credit for the idea.)
3018, I love this robot. Normally, this would be one of those ideas that tickles my brain and makes me smile when I see it and figure out how it works. Your successful implementation moved it from brain-tickling to truly amazing. You can be sure I’ll stop by at Worlds!
Ah, 254, another team with noteable sideshields.
They would interact with game elements if you pressed a game element against it, therefore it is a defensive shield, isn’t it? It also blocks the view of other drivers.
To me, they look like shields that defend against intrusion by other robots or game objects. If the shielding functions were already provided by a substrate of metal/lexan/other legal material, then I wouldn’t have a point.
Side-shields… It’s the age-old debate… I’d suggest using pieces of lexan, thus making it legal to use them however you would like. If I was your inspector though, I would let it through, just because it appears to be non-functional, other than keeping everyone from seeing your design.
One suggestion: Make the guide for the back larger… That way, you can have a wider range that you can approach from…
Another suggestion: Maybe try some elastic between the two linkage arms? Add a little force to raise the arm, while slow it when it goes down some? (It should work for both sides as well…
Behind our side-shields is almost solid metal. The side-shields are doing nothing more than covering our sides.
We have thought about making our HiPAD larger for that reason. We still want to be able to drive over tubes, and we don’t have much more room to make it larger without compromising that ability.
And we already have bungees on our chain to take the weight off.
Nice video! I like the enhancements you have made since the Wildstang Regional. We’ll see you again at Nationals this weekend and maybe we’ll end up on the championship alliance with you again.
How did you keep your center of gravity in the front when you put the rings out from the back? I remember seeing you at the first match this year in rolling meadows, IL. but ya how? i would think it would tip
Lol, yes taking all that weight over the back does indeed tip us over. however, the tubes weigh 1/4 pound, and if you watched the webcast today and saw us in the quarterfinals at Nationals you saw us take 12 tubes over the back. that weighed 3 pounds in just tubes, in addition to the weight of our cage. But… inside the front of our robot we have flaps that fold down to center the base and keep it upright. The flaps are underneath the lip of the base, and the 10 pound base is more than enough to counter act the 4~5 pounds we take over the back.
ohh…i see… nice job. my team had a problem with tipping over the back this year but we cut our basic bot thing in half and put a small omni wheel in the back so it can still turn but still wont tip. nice job tho today at nationals. ill see you at world. btw how far did u get in nationals, i couldnt see the whole thing
Ahh, we lost in the semifinals to teams 12A and 1103… We lost mostly due to our motors overheating on us. We haven’t had trouble with that until this competition (That’s our next project for worlds). We didn’t win, but we did take the Excellence Award.
