Here It Goes Again

Casey and I stayed afterschool today to practise with the robot and our new arm as we have a practise tournament on Saturday, November 3. This is one of our runs, timed at a two-minute period. After repeated practise we got our best to be 12 rings placed on the middle rack, and developed a strategy to get the most rings in the least amount of time.

Not another brick in the wall

Today, we were visited afterschool by Western High School's FTC rookie team. We showed them our set-up and gave them valuable knowledge about designs and coding. Our team really hit it off with their group and we exchanged contact information in order to provide further assistance to our hopefully future competitors.

Armageddon

The arm is now finished and ready for testing. This arm needs to be able to grab rings from the first level and deposit them onto the second level of the rack, all while maintaining balance and structural integrity. The arm can move up and down and the grabber on the end can rotate, giving us the degrees of movement we need in order to place the rings.

Growth Spurt

We removed the previously short aluminium channel and replaced it with a longer channel that can reach the middle level of the rack. In order to do this, we had to remove our cross support and brain mount, meaning we'll have to find a new location for them. Additionally, we will have to add an additional motor to the channel that will enable the grabber to rotate to grab and release rings.

Burn Out

While practicing today, our arm got caught on a rack and one of our servos burned out. Now we need to either replace the gears or the servo. While this is an easy fix, it serves as a reminder that parts are fragile and that our build needs to not only accomplish the task but prevent the parts from being damaged or over exerted.

Trust me, I'm a Doctor

Slight modification to our grabber to improve grip, we attached surgical hose to the Lego pieces to improve friction. This prevents the rings from slipping out of the grabber, making it easier for us to move the rings to the rack and score points.

Arms Race

Today our working design is due; it must be coded and be able to pick up a ring. Our grabber design is finished, so now its just a race against the clock to get an arm working so that our grabber can actually reach the rings.

One does not simply... oh wait

This is our Tel-op running Sonic, we still need to write an autonomous program for the IR beacon and elevate the arm for higher rows. In the mean time, however, we have a working arm that can quickly and easily place rings on the bottom row of the rack.
Another benefit of this test was that we discovered we could remove the rings from the grabber by simply tilting it, removing the need for our other ring flipper and making the transfer of rings from rack to rack that much simple

Bodybuilding

Nik is working on the Solidworks model of our arm for Sonic. Once we have our model, we can build the arm and test it out.

Invisible Sun

This picture shows the beacon and IR light that Sonic follows while in autonomous. This light is invisible to the human eye, but electronic cameras, such as the one that took this picture, and electronic sensors can see and follow this light.

Like a moth to the flame...

Casey finished coding for our IR (infrared) sensor on the robot. Now, as you will see, Sonic will circle while searching for the IR beacon and then drive and follow the beacon once it is found.
Sonic will use this IR sensor to identify the column with the IR beacon in the challenge. Now we have to finish and code our arm design so that Sonic can place the ring on the correct column without any human control; i.e. autonomously.

Organization

Organizing our parts in order to take inventory and figure out which parts we need to order. This is important as Lego and Tetrix parts are not cheap, so we can only order what is necessary.

Yours, mine, and ours

Today we combined our ring grabbing system and our ring release system, finding the two to work almost perfectly together. With some design modifications to improve performance, this system will work beautifully to grab and place rings.


This

+

This

20% Cooler

And They're Off!

After being operational for a week, our robot finally got graded for being able to move. While the other groups scrambled to get theirs moving, Casey just loaded up last year's program and got a grade so we could get on with building; it's awesome to be ahead of the game!

Don't let Nik use the drill press!!

You hear that, everyone??? So it has been written, so it shall be. Maybe I'm just no good with power tools; or, maybe it's the drill press' fault. Yup: definitely the press. Whatever the case, looks like someone else is going to have to machine the plexiglass, and I'm going to get out of the machine shop before I cause any more damage!


What could possibly go wrong?


...close enough...

Harder, better, faster, stronger...

Adapted aluminium to use for elevator as it is lighter and more stable. Also designed a stability mechanism using channels the hold the aluminium steady as it is raised.

Prototype V.2

Adapted the prototype ring release mechanism to work on our robot, added the ability to run a motor to operate the mechanism.

Bottoms Up

Done! End! Fin! The SolidWorks for the new robot's chassis is finally done! Know what that means? Me either. The new chassis is fairly similar to the one we used on last year's bot, since that one worked pretty well anyways. If it isn't broke, don't fix it; that's good news for our programmer at least, and the build guys have less to take apart now. You're welcome!



Chassis
The new chassis keeps the best aspects of the old one – including its 2:1 gear ratio for drive motors, which provided enough torque to move our monster of a bot faster than it probably should have been going – but boasts some improvements. For starters, it's only got one omni-directional wheel on either side, as opposed to two on the last chassis (which we changed because, during the finals, we kept getting pushed around by our opponents because our bot had no lateral grip). The plexiglass plate in the middle is new too; it's there to give us a place to mount our motor controllers and help de-clutter our wiring – a serious problem last season. The rest of the design was carried over from last year's bot.

Going Up

Determined that an elevator system would be best for our robot to reach the highest row. Began construction using channels.

Prototype

After trial and error with examining the rings, we finally created a crude prototype for a mechanism to store and release the rings onto the rack.

If you like it then...

The rings for the FTC challenge arrived today, along with an interesting game of ring toss. Fun aside, we were finally able to examine the ring size, shape, and weights in order to design an effective grabber for them and begin prototyping.