VEX-U FEAR Reveal

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Previous Games
#1

I would like to start by saying that FEAR will not be competing this year at the World Championships. I believe the New Zealand contingent at VEX-U level is strong enough regardless.

That being said the majority of this reveal is of our 15” robot, dubbed ‘Mako’. You will notice that it is a bit untidy, purely because we never tidied it up for competition. Parts were added as prototypes and kept rather than rebuilt. Wobbegong, our 24” robot, was already taken apart for another project by the time I was able to take photos. Some pictures were taken with slightly different designs. Both robots were last worked on about 2 months ago, before the decision to not compete at Worlds was made. Both robots are competition legal.

Mako: 15”

-8 motor drive, externally geared 1:2
-2 motor lift, externally geared 5:1
-1 motor intake
-Pneumatic Low hang

Mako was designed to be quick. However we left the drive ratio at 1:2 because no one felt they could competently drive a robot much faster than this. You may notice the size of the anti-tip bars hanging out the back. With speed, a short wheel base, and height, came great instability. This was also helped by reducing the drive speed once the arm was lifted past a certain point. We realised early that Large Balls were key in this game, so Mako was built to pick them up on the spot and to stash them. With a little more time the Low Hang with a Large Ball would have been perfected. As it was the Large Ball unfortunately fell out most of the time.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80165681/use/reveal/Mako.png

Wobbegong (Wobbe): 24”

-8 motor mecanum drive, internally geared 1:1.6
-2 motor lift, externally geared 7:1
-1 motor intake
-1 motor intake lift
-Winched High Hang

A Wobbegong is a type of carpet shark that lives on the depths of the ocean floor. This is honestly the best description of this Robot, as it is large and flat. Wobbe was specifically designed around manipulating large balls effectively, but was still quick when it needed to be.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80165681/use/reveal/Wobbe1.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/80165681/use/reveal/Wobbe2.jpg

As the leaving president for FEAR, I would like to thank the team since you have all been a large part of my life the past couple of years. Also my sincere thanks to Massey University for putting up with us and giving us a place to work as well as helping with funding. Finally, thank you to all other sponsors, both on the competition side and the volunteering side.

Myself and StimpNZ are happy to answer any questions you might have about the robots, FEAR’s involvement in VEX or how VEX-U works. There are also some other pictures lying around that can be posted to help answer questions you may have.

See you all at Worlds as a Volunteer!

#2

Surprised to see that there isn’t more interest in this very thorough reveal - as always, great work Shane and Jamie! Very interesting designs, too bad there isn’t a good video of the robots working (other than hanging). It really is a shame you guys won’t be competing at the World Championships, but I’m glad you’ll be volunteering!

#3

Well, maybe high schoolers automatically turn away when they see 11 motors. Great vex u bot. Nice 8 motor drive.

#4

Those ten-motor peasants, am I right? -_-

#5

Thanks, though to be honest I’m not sure how much of a difference the two motors make. Because everyone in VexU gets them there is much more pressure to have excess drive power, which means a lot of these bots end up with high school motor distributions with a couple more drive motors.

In my opinion The biggest difference between the regular competition and VexU are the extra sensors and materials allowed, both of which we severely under-utilised just from lack of electronics/maker experience outside of Vex. We are planning to remedy that next year, and I’m already thinking about the applications of 3d printing in Vex, as well as the nifty (if somewhat overadvertised) MPU-9150 for motion sensing.

I’m hoping that the game next year will make autonomous just as crucial as Toss Up points wise, but much harder to disrupt. I personally wouldn’t mind some sort of barrier based game again (Clean Sweep / Gateway) that would really make the time investment required for advanced autonomous worth it. Even though our team would never be the best with custom sensors, it’s still good for learning and amazing when they work as planned. A game like this would also reduce the requirement for pushing power.

Overall, I think the average skill level for VexU is getting stronger as enthusiastic people move from high school into college, and although my team isn’t competing, I’ll be at worlds with my family to support my brother and as far as I am concerned it can’t come quickly enough :D.

#6

Mako’s 6-bar looks so cool. Great job on that!

I would have loved to see these bots compete.

#7

Maybe the barrier can have a section 6 inches off the ground were you can choose to go under it if you want.

#8

It’s interesting to see that this thread has been bumped up again.

Thanks for comments Olaf and you other two (Sorry I don’t know your names).

As Shane said, there’s a lot more VEX-U has to offer other than the extra motor allowance. I think it would be good to see VEX increase the auton bonus in VEX-U since it is such a major part of our game.

Joe and anyone else who’s interested I have more pictures available of Mako.

Tabor- There’s a thread been started about next years game, I know you like going off topic so I’ll let it slide… this time.

#9

Sorry my mistake… Supposed to be 12 motors. I can’t even do counting after carrying the robot between the field and the lab computer for infinite times… yeah we are doing autonomous.

#10

Wouldn’t it be slightly easier to use a laptop? I’m sure there’s one somewhere you can use. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, as long as the floor is flat and clean, just drive it over to the field. :slight_smile:

#11

Yeah, i know most teams do autonomous with laptops and unfortunately i am not accessible to one. I personally want to use wireless download, but my team captain is in charge of the program so he just prefers to let me carry it again and again. I remember one afternoon our programmer brought his old slow laptop and that was my best day doing programming.

#12