This Years Robot

Our 2019 Competition Robot, I.W.I.C. (It Worked in CAD), is one of the team's most advanced machines to date. The machine boasts several mechanisms new to the team, and major improvement in many systems compared to our previous robots.

Drive-train

This robot's drive-train is new to us going into the 2019 season. In the 2017 and 2018 seasons, we had used a holonomic omni-drive, which allowed us to drive in any direction, but was noticeably slower, and very vulnerable to robots with extraordinary pushing power.

(2018 Robot Drivetrain Pictured Below)

This year we implemented "West-Coast Drive", which is similar to many of our robots from 2015 and earlier, with some key features. The wheels are outside the horizontal envelope of the frame, and cantilevered on the edge of the frame. They still sit within the overall frame perimeter, but are at the outermost edge. This increases our overall wheel-base, making us more resistant to tipping from a hit to our side. It also reduces the overall space the drivetrain takes up; each side of our drivetrain only takes up 5 inches of horizontal space, leaving us with a lot of room in the center of the robot frame.

(2019 Robot Drivetrain Pictured Below)

Mechanisms

Elevator

This year we designed and implemented a 2-stage cascade elevator to carry our primary scoring mechanism. A cascade elevator raises and lowers its inner stages at the same rate as the outermost stage. If the elevator is halfway up, the inner carriage is halfway up as well. In this configuration, we don't have to worry as much about how they come down once the system is rigged; unless something goes wrong they will be in lockstep with one another. We have an encoder on the output shaft of the motor, and are able to precisely control the elevator and program stop-points.

Gripper

Attached to the innermost stage of our elevator is the Gripper. It is our primary manipulator, which was designed to engage the Hatch Panel game piece only. It has two pneumatically actuated jaws which slide side by side vertically, and hold the Hatch Panel by the inner hole of the game piece.

The jaws have 3 settings; no pressure (or force), half-force, and full force. The No Pressure or "jaws contracted" mode is used as part of our grabbing sequence. The Half-Force mode is on when the robot's air tanks are pressurized but the robot is not enabled. It allows us limited pushing in on the jaws to put on a Hatch Panel before the match, or easily remove a game piece after the match. We also use it as part of our scoring sequence, which allows the game piece to be pulled off the jaws when the jaws are retracted if the game piece is held firm by the scoring location. If it isn't, the game piece will usually stay on the jaws, ready for another attempt to score. The Full Force mode is engaged whenever the robot is enabled and driving around. It is extremely difficult to pull the game piece off the robot while Full Force is engaged, but possible.

In addition to the jaws, the grabber has an extender piston hidden in the rectangular tube. It pushes out and retracts in as part of our grabbing and scoring sequences.

(2019 Robot Pictured Above)

Turret

The entire Gripper mechanism was seated on a turret, which allowed us to score the Hatch Panel in a 180° arc. It allowed our driver to not have to be completely precise in their approach to where we were attempting to score; the operator, in charge of the Gripper and Turret, was responsible for doing the final line-up of our scoring attempt if it was possible to score the game piece from that location.

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