We tested many different ideas such as a drop-in hub, drop-on attachments, and Tacobot, a 3-sensored robot from Carnegie Mellon. A lot of these ideas didn't get chosen, but testing them helped us identify what to incorporate into our robot! We also tested lots of different wheel options to figure out which ones would be best for our robot.

We built our robot as a team going through many, many versions and iterations. Our robot has a flat black, gear outputs on three sides and the robot's brain (which has the hub, sensors and motors) is removable making for quick transitions and less time in the home area. It was a long process getting the robot to be balanced and figuring out how to have the robot's brain removable.

We created two identical removable hubs - allowing both home areas to be coding at once & 5 identical shells - allowing our 4 different clusters to each have their own shell (and have an extra). Finally, we made a CAD (Computer Automated Design) version of our shell to have something to look back on if needed. 

Our robot and mechanisms have gone through many iterations this season. For example, on cluster four, we made a scissor lift inspired by the Isogawa books. It was difficult getting the gears strong enough for our scissor lift to work. We tested gears, worm gears, rubber bands, treads, and finally found a small rack and pinion was strong enough!