FIRST Robotics season is over for us. We had a great time at The Alamo Regional Inaugural Regional in San Antonio. We placed 20th out of 60 teams and won the Engineering Excellence Award. We were chosen for the number 8 alliance selection by Rookie Team 3847. FRC Team 647 completed the alliance. We played against Bomb Squad (FRC 16), Robowranglers (FRC 148) and Rookie team 3841 - Brandie Bronc Bots. We lost in two straight matches but we went down fighting to the end of the two matches.
Our robot was named in honor of Liz Brocklehurst who succumbed to her battle with cancer one week before the San Antonio Regional.
We won the Engineering Excellence award for our Game piece manipulator. It was a lifter made from 80/20 aluminum extrusion. It can lift the arm 10 feet in the air. The shoulder joint is mounted on the lifter and is able to move approximately 160 degrees of motion depending on the location of the lifter. It runs off a CIM motor with #25 chain and sprocket. The tube for the wrist mount is made of aluminum that was machined with Tim Ousley's CNC utilizing CAD done by the students on the team. The wrist works on a differential system of bevel gears, belts and pulleys. The wrist was capable of moving up and down as well as rotating left and right. The pincher is a controlled with pneumatics. The plate of the pincher or whale tail as it was called in the contest, is made of carbon fiber custom designed and made by the team. The drive team of Robert Kuykendall and Grant Agatston did a great job along with human player David Weiser of competing in the contest with very little drive practice prior to the event.
The team also worked hard to assist other teams in getting ready to compete in the Regional. Students helped with programming, wiring, pneumatics and general work on robots through out the three days of the tournament.
A film crew was there to shoot footage of our team in action for National Instruments and LEGO. They will be in our class this coming Thursday to shoot follow up footage with the team as well.
We participate in SXSW with our robot and three of our mentors on a panel discussion about FIRST robotics and mentoring. Our FTC robot as well as "LIZ" were demonstrated at the event as well.
BEST Robotics
We are now preparing for BEST robotics World Championships in Orlando Florida. The contest will be April 14 - 17 at ESPN Sports Center Village.
The scoring for the contest change with the ECO that was released on March 4th. Gadgets are still worth the same values but gizmos increased in value for delivery and sealing as well as gizmos packages increased in value. Gizmos and packages doubled in point value. We have chosen as a team to go for the dual production points in the contest.
We have brainstormed over the past two days of to methods for doing so. We have decided on a three pronged approach to handling each of the gizmo production pieces. We will have a wire gimbal for handling the cones, a "tennis ball" pick up device for the gizmos and a pincher for the seal on the packages. All of these will be on the end of an arm that pivots above the gadget container on the robot. The data port reader has been redesigned as well with wire for the data connection points rather than the plumbers tape. The reed switches will play a very instrumental part in this strategy. The programmers have been doing some experimenting with the strength of field of the magnets on the sensors. We hope to have an autonomous routine to assist with the successful detection and gathering of the proper gizmos.
Yesterday, we laid up a silicone mold of a VEX gear. Today, we popped the gear out of the mold. We cleaned up the mold and got it ready for the epoxy. We used the 5 minute epoxy in the Kit of Parts to fill the mold of the gear. We will take it out of the mold on Wednesday.
We have a goal of 100 gadgets packaged, return a waste of two gadgets, score at least one gizmo sealed gizmo package with 3 gizmos. This results in a score of 2800 points. We feel we can do this consistently and possibly get a higher score in a few rounds. Consistency along with no waste will be the name of the game. An additional 20 gadgets delivered will result in 240 additional points, and If we can package these, it will result in 360 points for a grand total of 3160.
So design is:
Two motors for drive system
One motor for opening/closing of the gadget door with microswitches at the top and bottom to control the motors
One servo for MRT hooks - this servo will also server as a signaling device for defective gadget color as well as possible identification of magnetic properties
One servo for Data Port Reader
One servo for gizmo manipulator (tennis ball pickup device)
One servo for gizmo package seal - this device will be a two bar linkage with the custom made gears from the epoxy.
The countdown has begun for the final push. 25 days until drive practice in Florida. We hope to be driving a completed robot in less than a week.
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