Day 4 Today was a snow day for the Limestone board, so we had an opportunity for some extra work hours.
Conveyor Prototype
We spent the morning and afternoon drawing up a quick prototype for conveyor angles, to be able to test the amount of bend that a note would be able to handle in transition.
We ended up leaving this as our robot archetype we chose doesn’t seem to have to have such a sharp angle of attack to pick up pieces.
Robot Archetype Discussion
We ended up on deciding what robot archetype we are going with for this year today. Originally going into the discussion trying to just reduce our scope from about 9 different options, we found we ended up narrowing all the way down to one concept as we felt comfortable enough with the information we had on what would work.
Narrowing Criteria
We started off with a list of criteria to narrow down our options, highlighting some of the more important things on our priority list.
- be short to go thru stage
- simple is easier to make, control, maintain
- pickup & shoot opposite (prioritizing auto)
- hockey shot to optimize stashing
- amp mechanism work with the shooter
- ground pickup
- shoot over defenders
- multi use for blocking shots
Over the bumper vs under the bumper
A big point of discussion was over the bumper vs under the bumper. We broke down the options with some pros and cons.
OTB
- wider
- easier to diagnose if a note is jammed
- more maneuverable
- less horizontal space (where electrical normally is)
- a foot more reach
UTB
- hockey shot
- no pivot/simpler
- no penalties
- no damage
- less vertical space (where mechanisms normally are)
- harder to package
- we’ve never done an UTB intake before
In the end after some spirited discussion it came down to wider intake vs less likely to damage the intake. Ultimately wide intake helps with every acquisition the robot makes, while collisions are going to be much more rare in auto, and more at high level. That led us to choose to do an over the bumper intake for 2024.
The Selection
We ended up deciding to go with the 254 2018 inspired robot. A key feature we liked is the combined speaker/amp/trap ability of this robot, and the ability to have a large amount of shot customization for potential strategic developments in the future. If we want to be able to shoot over a defender we can do that, or we can have a nice low shot to get the maximum amount of the goal visible.
The robot is a bit more complex than we would like, especially as our two elevator robots (2015 and 2019) have not had amazing elevators, we feel more comfortable since those years as many attractive COTS options have been released, along with our learnings from those two robots.
We did some quick blocky cad to start laying out geometry in a 3d way
We will continue to flesh this out asap so we can make sure that all the geometry works as intended.
Intake Cad
Started working on a real intake we can make this Saturday.
Haven’t gotten too far yet, but it’s on deck! Hope to get it much more together tomorrow.
Shooter Testing
We are trying to learn what we can about shooter accuracy and what makes things better, and are tracking where shots land and labeling the shot.
We have a pretty janky setup, but it should give us a direction to go in
Generally our learning has been grippier wheels vastly outperform less grippy wheels in range and accuracy. Compliant wheels are very unpredictable, so we want a non-compliant wheel and the note should be the one bending.
Tomorrow we hope to get some approximate compression numbers.
Team Updates
There was also a pretty massive rule change today which drastically nerfed the stashing strength. The amp now runs out or ends after 4 notes being scored. While this definitely effects the volume of stashing, we still believe a robot doing a two piece stash has value.
-Brennan