2021-2022 Season Robot
We named our 2021-22 robot Arson because he's so lit. We originally got the inspiration for our robot by watching YouTube videos to find some ideas that other teams were doing. One video really stood out to us - the “Robot in 30 Hours Reveal” from FTC alumni. The link to it is here. Robot in 30 Hours Reveal | FTC Freight Frenzy 2021-2022 - YouTube
We have REV and Tetrix parts kits at our school, so our robot wouldn’t be exactly the same as the one in the video (which seems to use Andymark parts), but we kept the idea of the angled lifter and scoop, a U-shaped frame and spinning intake, and a carousel wheel.
We are really proud of our final robot, and we have named it Arson. Its name comes from when we were using fire to burn the ends of our nylon rope, and we lit the table on fire.
Some of Arson's special features!
Lifter and Hopper
To deposit cubes and balls into the shipping hubs we decided to design a scooper box that rotates on a servo and is connected to the lifter mechanism.
At the start of the season we began prototyping with an old wood box from a previous year and a flipper to test out the intake and scoop design.
We first prototyped a scooper box out of cardboard and duct tape before using tinker cad to design our scoop.
After our first competition we redesigned our hopper to have a built in tilt, this was a challenging piece to design. The first try (blue) was missing a slot for the distance sensor, but was added before we printed it again. Our most current design is printed out of semi transparent 3D filament to help the drivers see if we have picked up freight.
By drilling holes in the sides of our 3D printed box we used tetrix screws to attach our laser cut ramp. The ramp went through several designs, first we added extra material to the sides. Then we used a heat gun to bend the acrylic without snapping it. The goal of these modifications was to help guide the game pieces then after breaking several versions while driving we added foam drawer liner to help with the intake process.
3D Design Intake
We created the intake based off of the location for the scooper box. A way we thought we could put cubes and balls into the scooper was to have a similar piece of energy to push, like a water wheel. We struggled to find a rev motor with the correct application. We couldn't find any wheels to work with so we designed a wheel out of silicone and then made a flexible 3D print which was sturdier.