2009 - Lunacy
Fourth Year

The Lunacy robot's ain objective is to pick up moon rocks or empty cells and tranfer them to the enemy trailor or alliance payload specialist.

Drivetrain:

The 2009 robot features a "wide style" chassis. In previous years, the robot was 28 inches wide and 38 inches long. This year, the chassis is 38 inches wide by 28 inches long. This design was implemented because it allowed more room to collect game pieces, and offers a slight advantage to drivetrain. The drivetrain uses four wheels to grip the field "regolith" because it is a simple solution, and because more wheels would only spread out the weight on the floor, without increasing robot traction. Two CIM motors mounted to toughboxes power he rover wheels. There is also a "second frame" made of 80/20, to provide rigidity and to provide handles with which to lift the robot (lifting by the bumpers is not safe).

Manipulation:

The robot has one main conveyer belt that captures orbit balls, transporting them to the hopper at the top of the robot. The conveyer belt is powered by one CIM motor attached to a large sprocket, so game pieces are placed in the hopper in under two seconds. The conveyer belt itself consists of an actual machine belt, stretched over driven lengths of pool noodle. Each piece of pool noodle is chained to the next one, transfering motion all the way up the belt. A tensioner bar keeps the belt on tight.

The hopper can store upward of nine orbit balls, we only had nine to practice with. It slants foward so that balls roll to the front of the hopper. Once at the front of the hopper, orbit balls are expelled by a roller bar with VEX wheels attached, powered by a globe motor. While this device is capable of scoring orbit balls in opposing trailers, it works especially well at delivering game pieces through the airlocks to the payload specialists.

2008 - Overdrive
Third Year

The conceptual idea for the Overdrive robot is rather simple.

The robot utilizes double wide 80/20 members that are 4.5' tall and allow the bottom of the claw to tower at 7 feet maximum. The 80/20 and claw is driven via chain and wire rope, respectively. The claw uses fiberglass joined by aluminum blocks. This makes the claw flexible preventing damage during competition, yet the fiberglass is stiff enough to maintain rigidity when picking up the ball. The Claw features a 700mm infrared sensor used to pick up the ball automatically, eliminating human error.

The drive system is simple, yet effective. It utilizes two 8" IFI traction wheels mated to Banebot 12:1 planetary gearboxes with CIM motors in the front and two freewheeling Andy Mark 8" omni-wheels in the rear. The electronics portion of the robot is a two-tiered design that allows for easy access to key components.

2007 - Rack & Roll
Second year

Our robot started with a two speed, six wheel transmission. The wheels were high traction (μ_s=1.6) with a custom setup that reduces frictional torque when turning. This is acheived by offsetting the center pair of wheels from the rest, allowing the robot to rock back and forth. When moving the robot is only riding on 4 out of the 6 wheel, but when turning the robot balances upon the center pair. This allowed us to turn on a dime, while maintaining strong pushing power. We designed this robot with a modular design in mind. When we first had to settle on design goals - we didn't. Luckily we had enough people to break into groups that each developed their own ideas that could be implemented fairly easily on the main robot. We had sub-teams designing ramps, electrical layouts, pneumatic layouts, a rotary arm and a telescoping arm among other things. We designed each with the ability to add or remove components easily. Without seeing the game played before, we had no idea what each component's strategic value would be. After many competitions we settled on a simple design: a powerful drive train and a telescoping arm.

Drive Train:

• Two speed
• High traction
• Six wheel
• Center wheels dropped

Telescoping Arm:

• Reaches all spider legs
• Moves vertically
• Starts the match tilted back, but extends to vertical as the match begins

Rotary Arm:

• Reaches bottom and middle spider legs
• Can reach top spider legs in some instances
• Did not perform well during competition
• Difficult to program

2006 - Rookie Year
Aim High

For our first competition, we decided to challenge ourselves and build a shooter robot to go for the three-point goal. We started with a basic drive train, but decided to add omni wheels to the back for increased maneuverability. We designed the robot with a large carrying capacity in mind and we needed a way to pick up balls from the ground quickly. We implemented a dual conveyor belt system with a hopper in the middle that achieved both goals. The second conveyor belt deposited balls into an adjustable shooter that allowed us to maximize firing positions.

What we learned:

• Plastic chain - although light - is not reliable
• The shooter was machined and ended up being incredibly heavy. This caused our robot to tip over quite easily.