Over the past few weeks we have been working on getting V3 of our roller claw, now forever to be known as Speciminer, into working order. V2 of Speciminer worked well enough at intaking but could not eject or tell if we collected the correct sample color. Additionally, while V2 was sturdy enough, it likely would have failed in some capacity after just a few times of us using it for testing or practice....
Today, the debacle continued with V4 Sampler. While we were trying to finish up solving the problems that arose last time, we discovered that some of the solutions we'd come up with created a whole new set of problems.
In Iron Reign's history, we've had many mishaps with our parts breaking, and the most notorious (and one of the most expensive) examples we've had are the numerous Axons we've broken. Krish, our main driver and one of our builders, holds the record with 5 (now 6!) broken servos, but today it was caught in 4K!
For this tutorial, we first created two simple parts...
Iron Reign’s robot drivers Abhi, Charlotte, and I, have been working hard to decrease our team’s glyph-scoring time. The past few meets, we have spent many hours practicing maneuvering on the field and around blocks, something that is crucial if we want to go far this competition season. When we first started driving the robot, we took approximately 4 minutes to complete a single...
The task today was simple. We replicated the prior work with the first gripper, as stated in the prior post, so we can begin connecting them. The biggest problem was finding all the parts to make it. We are hoping we can connect and mount them in the next couple days so it will be ready for the qualifier in Oklahoma. The improvement over last post was the addition of the rubber gripping material, as...
The jewel thief, the mechanism for knocking off one of the jewels, was going to be one of the tougher parts of our bot to integrate, based on the chassis we began with. But, with a little engineering and some long thought, we came up with a few ways to implement it. First, we began with a side mount, and it was alright...
Refering back to the design of the wheel guard, we decided it was time to actually mount it on the robot. At first, it seemed like the part was perfect for the robot since it fit just snug with the screws on the wheel. However, upon mounting, we discovered the following:
Turns out that the part is acutely shorter than the real height of wheel relative to the horizontal axis superimposed upon the vertical plane. As a...
Since damaging field elements is a huge no-no, we needed to fix this, we decided to create a 3-D part to protect the glyphs from our wheels
During the first attempt, I had just self taught Creo hours prior to construction. As a result, I was not very precise nor efficient in my design. Nevertheless, we recognized that there were some basic shapes we could use for construction such as a semicircle for the bottom half and two rectangles on the...
Because our robot at this point has merely become a collage of prototypes that we compete with, there are often subtle improvements that need to be made. Starting with the wheelbase, Abhi has written a blog about the shields we printed to protect the glyphs from the gnashing bolts of our mechanum wheels, and we also tensioned all our set screws and motor mounts to make sure that our...
We were tearing up our glyphs like this because our wheels had no guard for their screws:
More specifically, we had multiple issues with damaging the glyphs. First, the exposed screws on the mechanum wheels (Fig 1) tended to cut into the glyphs as seen in the above picture. As well, you can see relatively sharp edges on the wheels where the block could also be cut, and that the blocks could be pinched by the...
With our single degree of freedom lift fastened to the robot we focused on the appendage that would grip to within an inch of its life any glyph we fed it. We initially toyed with simple tetrix channels to form a make shift rail that would hold axels for pivoting points, however we found tetrix to be a bit too cumbersome and decided to use rev...
The grabber has been evolving. A column made of a turkey baster and a wooden dowel attached to servo has come into fruition. The first drawings and designs are coming along, and some 3D printed parts have been thought up to allow the square dowel to become a hexagon. An adapter of sorts. The grabber and lift have been outfitted with a...
The games have begun and it’s time to build. So that’s what Austin and I did. A war had been declared. Legions of the indentured collided on the battlefield. Millions were slaughtered during this new age armageddon. Austin had his army. I had mine. Two different ideas to do the same task: lift glyphs into their correct positions. A simple job but one that caused a rift in...
After determining that the treaded channel was much too buggy to perfect with the time we had, we shifted attention to other scoring systems like grabbers, however before finding the right grabber we decided we needed to get the track for it completed first. We’ve had experience in the past with all sorts of rails from Tetrix kits that convert their standard channels into lifts, to the newer...
In an attempt to get a working lift system before the coaches meeting we will be presenting at, a linear slide has been attached to the robot, along with a pair of grabbing arms. They work surprisingly well and aren’t as complicated as my idea. Plus the importance of speed has really taken hold on me this year. We need to be as fast...
Over the past couple of days we’ve experimented with a horizontally mounted track system that we had hoped would serve to move blocks through the entire length of the robot and into the crypto box. Immediately we noticed a few issues, the primary one being that the tread was static in terms of mounting and therefore wasn’t accepting of blocks when feed at an odd...
The sun came out and it was back to the field. We got started right away, both of us building our designs. Since the cryptoboxes were wider than the 18 inch sizing cube, we started by designing a fold out for the conveyor belt. This was entirely proof of concept, purely to see if it was at all aplicable in the game...
After the game reveal video was released we had some ideas on how to have our robot grip onto the blocks, but we couldn't test it without a makeshift glyph to hold onto. So we decided to upcycle some old cat and weather damaged field tiles by cutting them up into 6 X 6 squares and placing them in a cube formation. Attached below is an image of our handiwork and a image...
The block scoring system is going to be an integral part of the competition this year, and it will have to built sturdy. It’ll have to be reliable for us to have any shot of winning any matches. So we got to brainstorming. We spent a while at the whiteboard, drawing up various mechanisms and ways to pick up blocks. One idea was the idea...
This video was pulled from Argos visits to: The NSTA STEM Expo in Kissimmee FL, in the path of eclipse totality in Tennessee, and in North Texas at The Dallas Makerspace, The Southwest Center Mall, Southside on Lamar and the Frontiers of Flight Museum. We hope you find it interesting:
The Robot Reveal video is underway. With most of the filming done, the sky grows dark and the day ends. A night time of editing sets in for the poor miscreant who volunteered for the task. Huddled in the corner with a raw fish and his precious computer, the boy opens premiere pro to begin. All is right with the world. The five hour...
Iron Reign members left to right are Ethan Helfman (Build, Communications), Janavi Chada (Programming, Communications), Tycho Virani (Programming Lead, Main Driver), Jayesh Sharma (Business Lead, Build, Communications), Darshan Patel (Build), Lin Rogers (Communications Lead, Logistics, Business) and Charlotte Leakey (Programming, Logistics), with Evan Daane (from BTW, Build, Photography) in repose. Not shown: Max Virani (Design Lead, Programming), Omar...
Previously, our side shields were zip-tied through 4 bolt holes on tetrix pieces per side, and we had taken one off to reach our drive system. When putting it back on to fine tune autonomous we took the time to cut out space for a wrench and bolt it on. The holes were already the correct size, we just had to line...
The first particle launcher we saw by another FTC team was actually a crude flywheel and rail design back in October where the rail was a cut up PVC elbow. Back then we considered a number of different designs including impact launchers, catapults, flywheel + rail systems and dual flywheel shooters like our sister team built. We decided to go with a catapult design because Max...
One of the leading problems Iron Reign faces is our ability to allot time to effective driving practice. Driving practice is essential for our success in the robot game, but it is sometimes difficult to find time to practice due to other team members working on various robot improvements. We have created two different drive teams, a main team and a backup...
Throughout the year, we've dealt with static issues with our robot, as shown here and here. And, now that we've pretty much gotten autonomous and the lift out of the way, the static was our only remaining issue.
To prevent the static shocks, we needed to isolate the motor controllers and other...
Although we're confident in our robot's ability to shoot balls and press beacon buttons, we decided that in order to be competitive, we should try to score the cap ball. The lift would have to be strong enough to lift the surprisingly heavy ball, but also not take up too much space. Our robot, as like every year, is very close to the 18 inch size limit in all directions, so we...
To tell the robot how far to move forward we had to calculate our motors RPM. We did this by telling the robot move to 10 rotations forward and calculating how far it travelled. After he RPM we created a model field upon which we designed a set path for the robot during autonomous. One path for red and then one for blue....
One of the issues we saw in Arkansas was in the lack of flexibility we had in terms of the end game. We efficiently scored balls and beacons, but when our teammate for a specific match could do the same, we lost possible points scored. This led us to conclude that a Cap Ball Trapper,...
Up to this point, we hadn't given much attention to a beacon scoring mechanism that we could use in both autonomous and tele-op. At the scrimmage we learned that scoring the beacons was almost vital to winning the match, and we couldn't do that. We rigged up a short u-channel on a plate and attached it to our robot, hoping we could just ram...
The wiring, which had been on the robot, had been a constant issue. The wiring tangled, interfered with the scoring mechanism, and led to some inefficiencies in electrical output. In order to increase the available space to reconfigure the inner workings of the robot, we built a second testrix layer, which also conveniently serves as a handle.
The new level...
Today marks six days until Doomsday (AKA Little Home, Arkansas), so we needed to finalize everything. For the catapult, Jayesh and Omar fixed my catapult "fixes". However, with the new fixes, the catapult was more powerful, and required recalibration. To adjust to the new fixes, we removed the old stop-mechanism, and replaced it with a wooden one that stops it on the 2nd level of...
So, the original catapult, when not stuck, performed pretty well at the scrimmage. However, since we opted not to measure our robot at the scrimmage, we didn't realize that our robot was not within the FTC size limits. When measured after the fact, it was 18x19x20 in x, y, and z axes respectively, due to the catapult's position on the robot. To rectify this, we decided to cut the catapult down,...
New intake area is wider than before
At the Scrimmage we noticed that the rubber bands would get tangled as they rubbed against the underside of the catapult bowl, and so didn't reach as far down at the bottom. We untangled them before each match but decided to test out the smaller ones when we had the chance at...
We entered a contest to win a pack of Tetrix parts on Twitter, and we won! You can also enter the contest by following these instructions
So, as a thank-you to them, we made this:
Our Meccanum wheel base idea started off on a shaky note. While we had a good amount of success in the tass we wanted to complete, like driving right or let without turning the entire robot, including the basic driving functions. However, as we went on with testing, we found that over time, the force the meccanum wheels...
For the 2016-2017 season, particle scoring is really important. During autonomous, balls that are launched into the center vortex earn 15 points each, and balls that are launched into the center vortex earn 5 points. If done quickly enough, the particle scoring can negate most of the advantages another team has - just 8 particles scored during the driver-controlled period is equivalent to scoring all 4 beacons. With a good scoring mechanism, the only thing that your team...
As much as we love our robot from last season, Geb, we need a robot that is better able to fit the season's challenges. Our needs for this year are:
The cool thing...
We have spent the last few practices formulating a new driving base for our robot this year. We went through various possibilities: tank-based drive using both tracks and the omni-regular system (both of which are systems that we have utilized in previous years). However, both systems showed inefficiencies with this year's competition. We decided to go to a system using mainly Mecanum...
At this practice, our goal was to get everybody familliar with this year's game, Velocity Vortex, and to brainstorm some ideas for this year's robot. Some organization also needed to be done in terms of parts (everything is everywhere and nowhere at the same time) and also in terms of this year's meeting structure. Last year...
With all of the large projects and events that Iron Reign have been commiting to (with more still to come), we have unfortunately been neglecting Geb and as we came to find a few weeks ago, many of the running parts that give us the majority of points in competition were falling in disrepair. We found that the tape measure system...
The standard Tetrix treads and tread inserts aren't nearly as sturdy as we would like. When they snap it's a real effort to put back together stretched over the idlers, and the inserts peel apart, bringing our traction down. The new material is a rubber conveyor belt material from Andymark, and the underside track chain is 3D printed in nylon to mesh with the...
Let's assume you are building a LEGO Mindstorms or Vex IQ based Sumobot, but you want to skip some of the basic mistakes beginners will make. Here are some tips and tricks.
After the long weekend last week, today was a reasonably relaxed practice. We decided that we could work on anything, as long we stayed focused. The two main foci were the -Robot on a Hoverboard- and fine tuning our PID for autonomous.
We experimented with balancing the robot more evenly on the hoverboard to keep it on a straight path...
In the middle of Saturday's event we decided it would be a GREAT idea to put the competiton robot on the hoverboard and try to drive it around. Theoretically if we got it centered correctly it could only drive forward and backwards. We could extend...
At both competitions we've been to so far, we've noticed that the servo that controls the cliff hanger's elevation often stresses and heats up due to the strain being put on it, especially near the end of the match. It has already scorched quite a few of our fingers. To remedy this, we decided to replace it with a...
Today, we realized that the tape-measure attachment that's supposed to push the buttons on the beacon could have multiple functions instead So, we designed an attachment to the tape measure that can push any buttons, including people's. Max designed it in PTC and then printed it. We have yet to actually test it on the robot, but it works in-hand.
This is just our first design, and it has not...
Our tape measure is constantly under stress, which usually isn't a big problem if the driver is positioned with a straight 90 degree angle, but when twisted can result in cracks.
While our tape-measure design worked decently at our competition last week, with multiple mid zone scores and one high zone score, we are going to need more consistency to be a valuable ally in our matches. At...
Today, we took every single 3D-printed part off our robot to dye them. We used RIT clothes dye, which worked because our parts are nylon. The purpose of dying all our 3D-printed parts red was so that they would stand out from Tetrix parts while demonstrating the robot. It was a bloodbath. The color was the color of the Nile during the Plagues of Egypt. It seemed as if we...
Since we have a semi-reliable form of going up the ramp (which we are working on to make closer to 100% efficiency), a priority for our team robot-wise is to establish an effective method of scoring blocks. We've designed a preliminary model with our old plastic trough that uses a conveyor belt made of fabric and foam sewn together that we tried to use before but decided not to. The foamy...
We have recently been working on a new approach to climbing the mountain. Our strategy so far was to have one system customized for climbing the mid and upper mountain (Churro Climber), and a separate system for climbing the cliff (Crossbow Grapple). The Churro climber system was beginning to work but it was floppy and we were thinking about stiffening the nylon extensions with...
Our main weakness in previous years had been our presentation. This year, we plan to change that. When our team was solely FLL, we practiced our presentations beforehand, so, we're applying that to this year. We've done 2-3 presentations so far and it seems it really helps us. As well, we're making a powerpoint presentation to assist us, giving us information we might forget and providing a visual...
One of the methods to score in this year's competition is depositing the two climbers in the bucket behind the beacon. This being relatively simple, we decided to concentrate this practice on creating something to get us these easy points. We discussed possible ways to deposit the climbers and came up with a design that used some of the scoring mechanism we already had on our robot. The idea was to...
After further testing of the churro climbers, we noticed that the axle the gear is rotating on had been bent severely due to the strain on it of the arms pulling. If we left the axle as it was, it might wreck something else later and become unusable, so we tried to figure out a way of creating something that served the same function as the axle but wouldn't bend as easily. We decided...
Since we mounted the beater bars on a slide, we have been keeping them from going too far and falling off their rails either by obstructing them with a couple of bolts or with a bent piece of steel wire, but neither method is fool proof. The wire can get bent out of shape as the slide moves forward and collides with it, and...
As we continued to work on the churro climber mechanism today, we decided that the cable ties bowing out would be a big issue that needed fixing. By making a small guide piece, we could ensure that the cable tie actually extends from the front of the robot instead of flopping around like overcooked spaghetti on the other side. So, I've made a rather...
Iron Reign held our first of two meetings before the New Year season to concentrate on improving our main designs to ensure they worked as expected. Starting with our Churro Catcher, we found that as the motor moved the two arms down, the tension in the two churro climbers was two low to actually push out the latches forward from the robot. We built two small metal segments...
The team met up on Sunday and we focused our meeting on finalizing our trough design and making our churro catchers usable. Beginning with our trough prototype, we put in an angled metal piece to the main box compartment and shortened the height of the box. This height was specific to the height of the blocks, allowing us to shave off blocks that become stacked upon those that we've already collected and...
Most of the big-value items in terms of points have to do with the mountains, so climbing mechanisms are a must have. Since the tank treads have problems scaling the churros on the middle and upper mountains, we need another way to pull the robot higher. Our solution was to put hooks on the ends of long, heavy-duty cable ties that we could...
The team had a meet before the busy Christmas period to focus on the main part of of our scoring mechanism: the trough. We discussed possible courses that would be easiest for us to score points and code at the same time. We went through multiple ideas of how the trough would work. One idea was to have our trough consist of rotatable base to account for...
Today our team worked on improving the methods of capturing and holding blocks and balls. Our first design involving zip ties had major difficulties including that it had little strength to pull objects in. For this reason, we redesigned the beater bar using a 3-D printer that had stronger materials to capture materials along with frictionless tape which did not cause the blocks to become stuck. Through our tests we can see that...
Iron Reign held its first Christmas break parade today and we decided to focus our time on making multiple small improvements, rather than adding one big part on our robot. Omar, Darshan, and I spent our time on rewiring and fixing our side motors. We found that one side was greatly lagging behind the other, so we tested to see which motor was failing, and rewiring the system fixed our driving system....
The beater bar mechanism was put on a slide so that we could restrain it until some point during the match, but we had yet to actually build a restraint and trigger to serve this purpose until now. Since the mechanism would likely include rubbing pieces and need customized parts, we chose to model and 3D print the part in...
This past Friday, the team tried to get the robot working in a small scrimmage with seven or so other teams. At the scrimmage, we managed to get our cow-catcher working, even though we nearly burned out our servo. During the process of finding the right positioning and testing it while driving we managed to tear up quite a few rubber inserts on our treads. Even though the scrim was scheduled to...
Currently Max and Tycho are working on a beater bar 3D part that is stiff enough to pull in blocks, and will hopefully double as a churro catcher when spinning. However, since the parts take 4 hours per set to print, and are harder to rapid-fire test and change and tweak relative to some other options we're going for other options till they're tested. The churro catchers help us to secure holding up the ramp but...
"Measure nonce, cut twice," is Iron Reign's unofficial slogan, as hidden in our html.
We especially learned the error of cutting hastily today, as we errored in the production of our bumpers.
Evan and I spent multiple practices on working on the front and back bumpers. We easily took ten hours cutting them into their perfect shape. However, after we...
We held a post-Thanksgiving meet to focus on the mechanical side of our robot, as we had been devoting a majority of our time to software and other such things. The problem we faced with our beater bar being installed on two sliding extrusions is that we had to have an incline adjusted to going up two levels and not...
As the point values make clear, managing to get the robot to hang on the end of the "cliff" is likely worth the effort. As such, we've worked on making a strange grappling-hook type contraption to pull the robot up. This first version works rather like a crossbow. A telescoping fishing pole has its largest loop hooked up to a long "bolt" which extends beyond the pole to a bungee cord tied to a pair of arms on...
Last weekend Darshan and I tried to drive the robot in a small scrimmage with eight other teams. Even though we hit a few bumps along the competition we were able see how the robot drove and handled. We also saw what we could do easily and what was hard for us. Among the bumps was an incident involving a tread falling off the track because we hit...
We needed to create bumper shields because the debris on the field interfered with the tread. We had a prototype on the left, 
Evan and I cut the bumper shields out of polycarbonate with two made for the front and two for the back. To do this, we were trained how to use a bandsaw. We cut them down so that they will be moveable.
Evan and I will attach the bumpers,...
Similarly to last year, the beater bar on our robot needs to be deployed in order to stay within the size limit. Using motors would make the robot heavier, and potentially too heavy to go up the ramp anymore. Bungee cords are something that we've always resorted to in order to save weight, so we decided to use them once again. By tying them to the back of the beater bar sliders...
Whether or not we were allowed to compete, we felt that it would be worthwhile to go to the scrimmage, if only to see how we compared to other teams. Climbing the mountain is the hardest mechanical design challenge so far, and we were able to see their solutions.
Many teams had treads like ours, with different arrangements of idlers, while...
Since the robot's last run, several fixes and adjustments had to be made in order to make the robot operational again. All we had to do was tighten a couple of bolts, so it wasn't that big of a deal. We'll probably have to do a quick check from now on to make sure nothing's falling off. Afterward, we set to using the same beater bar we used last year (the first...
A few weeks back, I designed a new chassis. It was a combination of the rocker bogey and a tank to make the rocker boogie tank! With the advantage of sturdiness from a tank and the ability to adjust to surfaces from the rocker boogie. This combination is unstoppable!!!
The task proved to be easy (just added tank treads to a rocker boogie) but worked. After I tested the prototype on a number of surfaces, it...
There's a scrimmage next Saturday that we may or may not be going to based on Dallasisd technicalities with our team. Our goals for today were to get a basic autonomous going to dump climbers and maybe some mountain climbing tests. However, the controller apps needed to be updated and we got a lot of errors when connecting.
If the controller gives an error mentioning "USB UART" apparently the only fix is to...
Dylan, Ethan, and I decided to watch videos to see what other teams were doing to build and improve their robots during the Circle Meeting outside. We wanted to see if any of the designs were successful so we could learn from them. The videos included Robot in Three Days, RiTD Explained, and Trojan Robotics .
Every video we watched was ahead of us; we have a...
Last week I designed a case for our IMU sensor in Creo and wrote up how it could be improved. I've fixed most of those issues and we are ready to share the results. There is one version with Tetrix hole spacing and another that works for Actobotics channels. Either can be used with aluminum extrusions though you might have to drill out the mounting holes depending on your bolt size.
You can...
We're used to having gyros to help maintain heading, but we've never been fans of the Hitechnic gyro sensor. Now we have more options and the BNO055 looks pretty good. But our testing has been off robot so far and we need a way to securely attach the sensor to our robot which bounces around like crazy when climbing the mountains. So in PTC Creo, I'm designing a 3D printable case for this sensor that we...
Today, we tried to figure out the best possible way to stick all the motor controllers and the PDM together to minimize the amount of space they take up on the robot. Fitting the finished product into the gap on the back end of our robot would also be a bonus. We had previously thought of one way of doing it: 
When placed on the robot,...
After last week's fail we decided that we should change a couple of variables of the environment. The first and easiest to fix being the condition and cleanliness of the mountain ramp. Having dust on the ramp would severely lessen the friction holding the robot in place, so we wiped it down with glass cleaner and started up the robot.
We held a team meeting outside on the field discussing multiple possible solutions to the problem of the robot ascending to the top of the ramp. While we are already able to climb the ramp, the robot strafes significantly as it climbs above each rung on the ramp. This can be accounted for during the driver-controlled period, but the strafing can't be accounted for during autonomous, unless we have each side of the...
Today, for the third time, we worked on setting up the field. We finished the mountains and the climber setup. We made several mistakes along the way. Firstly, we screwed the mountain climber mounts in wrong, not one or two times, but three times. Then, we realized that the mountains couldn't even fit inside the tent and the wooden boundaries. So, we had to dissasemble it,...
Today we were charged with the task of building the FTC field. There was one problem. The tent we were setting it up in was in a state of decay. We cleaned out the area to make space while others put together the field. It was changed comletely from when it started. When cleaning we discovered many cool things like cassettes and floppy disks. The mat of the field was a little old but...
I am so done with these treads. For the past three hours I have worked to soak the treads and tread inserts in dish soap. *takes deep breath* The process is painstakingly slow and also literally painful. The process itself seems simple but after soaking both pieces the insert must be pushed in with a considerable amount of force. This is not user friendly and is not what the company...
Since the robot game for this year came out about a week ago, we were thinking about which kind of drive system would work best for the challenge, which mostly involves climbing. Some of the concept we came up with were rocker bogies, rubber-banded tires and a tank drive with treads. Since we already had the preliminary design started for a tank drive, I started modeling that.
...
Now that the game has been released, we as a group discussed the different amount of points per each possible game strategy that would give us the most ample amount of points during the given time limit. We also discussed the different ideas on the tracks and wheels that are possible for our design. The arm attachment was discussed for the grabbing of the highest mount of the mountain which would give us the...
We continued our meeting at the Dallas Makerspace after the GitHub tutorial. We unpackaged the new motors and motor controllers for the first time and took out the phones to scan the hardware configuration. We added Anderson Power poles to some of the motors. Lin taught Alisa and Ethan how to crimp wires and attach the power poles.
Scanning the hardware configuration was very troublesome...
We've been experimenting with Android controlled robots while we wait for our ModernRobotics modules. Argos is a chromovore - it seeks an identified color using OpenCV4Android machine vision processing. It tries to maintain a given distance from the colored object and follow it around. It's built using the IOIO-OTG for low level interface with the motor control electronics. The ZTE Speed phone is mounted on pan/tilt hardware from ServoCity...
After finishing about 2/3 of the drive train, I came across the first custom part. We sliced a small chunk off of the inner beam so we could install our goal catcher. Getting the alignment on the model to be accurate for the real robot was a challenge, as the robot was in another room, and I'm pretty sure we just eyeballed the cut in the first place, which meant there were no real recorded measurements I...
A Solution we have produced for the placement of the tube was to place to long beams to opposite sides of the robot and connect with a third beam. This addition grants us more surface area to place our extra components such as the NXT brick and motor controllers. With these components gone, we now have adequate space for the tube mount. However, we encountered a problem as we found that the mount's base was a...
Now that our rolling goal clamp system is working, we have the task of placing the lift tube to elevate the balls to the correct position. First we have to reconstruct the back end of the robot to accommodate for the extra size and girth of the tube. With our rearranging, we also now have to connect the rolling goals to the tube and complete our scoring mechanism. As soon as we complete this, we are...
While our scoring tube mechanism for the balls to be placed in the rolling goals is being finalized, our simple task of capturing the rolling goals has finally been coded and physically placed on the robot. Through the use of a simple if/else statement within a while loop, we toggle the open/closed positions of the servo controlling the capture mechanism and now we can easily maneuver the rolling goals into position...
With the scoring mechanism gradually coming together, today was devoted to the testing of the sync between Samantha and our robot. The drive control system has given us a weird bug, where on startup, the robot starts moving only one side of the wheels without any input from our side. While the other programmed code still works, such as the drive control and simple toggle, the constant turning of the left wheels makes it difficult for the other methods...
The ideas we have come up with for scoring the balls in the rolling goals have undergone many changes throughout the year. The basic plan was to somehow stack adjacent tubes on top of one another and raise the balls to maximum height and score in the highest tube. Today, we came up with the actual design:springs. Utilyzing springs, one will be attached to each tube and a simple servo with a toggle will push each attached...
Since we've already cut away part of the beams making up the robot's base to accommodate a rolling goal's shape, we now have to put down a hook to hold it as we drive.
We experimented with rotating down flat pieces, but found that when we applied any force the part was just pulled up and didn't do much in holding anything. The holes cut into the base...
For a long time now, one of our problems has been to figure out how to mount the tubes that will function as the lift system onto the robot, and where to mount them. Today, we tackled this question with the highest possible efficiency. We used a small piece of tube that was serving as an example to get an idea of how big the mechanism should be. After trying a few things, we decided...
Today we 3D-printed a new version of the tube joint made to hold a spool (which we also made and printed) to put on the very ends of the SVAU (Spheroid Vertical Acceleration Unit) that are not connected to other segments by the normal joint. The piece that attaches directly to...
While looking around on the internet, we found that some teams were trying to grab the bottom of the Rolling Goal to pull it around. This, however, is not what we plan to do right now. What our idea is is to create a sort of socket to put the rolling goal into to facilitate travel even further, then, using this, we will grab the base of the rolling goal with a couple of sticks or something. The back of...
This week we finished updating the ball collector. This is a major accomplishment, since this is a very important part of the machine, and is the first step towards the ability to score. Our finishing the collector now allows us to concentrate on the tube joint and figure out how to finish the entire scoring mechanism to have it ready for the competition. We are thinking about making a whole new robot that is...
Today we came up with a new attack angle for the beater bar. This new angle allows for greater accuracy for picking up the the large balls but missing the small ones. We also added a temporary mounting area for our NXT and wired up the beater bar motor so it would not get snared when the ramp deploys.
We have also finalized our plan to not pick up the smaller balls and have a large amount of...
Today we attempted to fit our tubes into our newly-printed Tube Joints. The tube joints, however, were at least 2 mm too small in the inside diameter, so we had to spend quite a bit of time sanding them down. We decided that this would be a good time to use the drum sanding attachment on our new Dremel. This helped speed up the process quite a bit.
Today we set out to build an upgraded version of the beater bar. We used square dowels from home depot to prevent the twist-ties from changing their orientation on the bar. We down the twist-ties and made a design that intakes the balls with 100% efficiency
With the 100% efficiency we can now move onto the tube mechanism to finally finish our scoring system. Our robot is approaching completition and with...
Last night we went to the Dallas Makerspace to build our ramp for our capture and intake system. Lin had already done the mockup in cardboard and the rest of the team had tested it with the beater bar assembly, but that was too fragile to test on a moving robot. So I took the mockup to the Makerspace to reproduce it in Lexan.
I drew the shape from the...
Last night we went to the Makerspace to 3D print our second version of the Tube Joint (link in the related articles section). We arrived with a Sketchup file on a flashdrive, but needed to export it as an STL file so that the slicing program (we used Kisslicer) could convert it to g-code, which the 3D printer uses. There were a few issues that we found and fixed in the...
Today we published an updated version of our tube joint on Thingiverse. This version of the tube joint added a third tab for extra durability, and a gradual slope was added leading up from the base to the hinge tabs to allow it to print w/o structural support.
We asked for feedback from the 3D Fab(rication) Group at the Dallas Makerspace. They were the ones who told us that the...
