In the famous boiler room, you will be introduced to the evolution of our robot. Our team, as powerful as they are, also had to face incredibly tough challenges which lead them to the construction of their advanced robot. With the help of the CRC’s prototyped robot and game, we were offered the opportunity to build a robot of our own.
The Robot
It is composed of 2 principal components. The robot’s brain is embedded in the constituent with the omni wheels and programs the robot to perform. Extended from the base, the arm has a bearing attached to the steel axis and rotates with the help of one more motor bind to another big omni wheel placed in the opposite direction thus allowing its rotation. The Motor is attached to a big omni wheel; the extension is made with two regular and a double T-slotted cubes are attainable.
To pick up the blocks, two motors are attached with gears and chains to the axis. In order to hold the blocks in place, 7 flex wheels were placed on each axis. Additionally, elastics were set to add compression blocking the cubes from falling. This process is repeated until the structure indicated on the card is completed in the robot. Afterwards, the robot backs away from the structure as it is released. Once the structure is finalized and ready to go, a sixth motor attached to the tube made by flexible plexiglass containing the ball will be dropped in the hoop to gain the points.
The First Step
During the month of November, the robot team came up with their initial idea and started building their first prototype out of cardboard. Their initial idea was more comprehensible thanks to their newly built model. Then, they proceeded to build their second prototype out of t-slots, plexiglass, elastics, and other materials. While working on their second prototype, they were planning on perfecting it. They were closer to the final product with every step.
Throughout the process, they had been additionally working on rotating the whole robot. At first, they had decided to make it move from the center, they soon realized that it wouldn’t be precise and stable. Consequently, they are now working on another system. Instead of the engine and pivot point being both situated at the center of the robot, the pivot point will not change its place; however, the engine is now indirectly connected to the center through the pivot point. During their work, they always had the same skeleton and idea yet had to continuously refine their prototypes to fix the mistakes.
"I Don't Need Any Help, This Place Is Full Of Soot."
When the competition was announced, the Yuna Programmers were finishing their research on different types of sensors such as color sensors, distance sensors and others. The main programmer has ascertained that all circuits were working with CRC duino and sensors. Although they didn’t have all the necessary equipment, they didn’t waste time. They began programming the robot all the while solving programming issues that had been given to the competition of the previous year.
During the month of December, they thought about ways to finalize the prototype and make the design more compact and efficient while also communicating with the programming team on how to program each card separately. A big challenge they encountered from the start was perfecting the mechanism that had to grab the game pieces. After a multitude of tests, they found the best solutions and discovered functional ways to throw the ball at the end of the game. They have now set their plan that needs to be worked on before the competition.
During this festive month, the Yuna programmers continued solving the programming exercises, but this time they began to analyze the codes in more depth by explaining them on the whiteboard in the room. Everything was going so well until they encountered their first pitfall! The Yunas had received their brand new CRC duino, but had difficulty using it. Still, after a few days they took matters into their own hands and went back to their work. The robot programmers converted the codes they had to be compatible with the CRC duino. Eventually, they wrote the skeleton for the rest of December.
Undefeatable
This robot has a lot of restrictions that had to be taken into account, which was a big challenge for the team. For instance, the size of the robot was quite the obstacle. They had to change the layout of the robot to make it more compact, in the vein of the mechanism to drop the ball they had to do the same thing for its design. The number of motors allowed was also a challenge, but not one that was too big for the team. To overcome it, they found a system that has mechanisms that work more efficiently, and that can do more than one thing. To get through all of it, they decided to make the best out of the tight time they had during December to work much more dexterously and meet those limitations.
