We used the tools discussed in Part 1 – Game Theory to determine our strategy in Part 2 – Strategy and Research which allowed us to defined our Robot Requirements in Part 3 – Robot Requirements for this season’s game (and game manual). Now we are ready to build a robot.
The Reveal
To keep this conceptual Robot in Three Days as approachable as possible, we are going to start with the AM14U3, 2017 KoP Chassis (am-14u3) from AndyMark.
Next we will setup our GEAR intake. To ensure the most efficient cycle time, we will design our GEAR intake to collect GEARS in the “back” of our robot and deposit them from the “front” of our robot. This requires extra driver skill, but designing out unnecessary turns from our cycle will increase our cycle efficiency.
With a simple machine, the inclined plane (here is an example found while researching existing technologies – FRC 2015 Indy District: Team 5188 Highlights @1m14s), we can take in GEARS as the fall from the LOADING STATION (2 ft 1 in from the carpet) and slide them directly into our robot. If at the end of this inclined plane there is a small half circle (we will call this our resting cradle) equal to the outer diameter of the GEAR, it will come to rest in an optimal transport orientation Once at the van door, a van door motor could rotate the resting cradle to be perpendicular to the peg (1 ft 1 in from the carpet). Finally, a small pneumatic cylinder mounted on the back of the resting cradle could push the GEAR out of the cradle and completely onto the peg before the robot pulled back.
Finally, we don’t want to leave the ten (10) FUEL with the birds during Autonomous Mode, since our analysis showed that robots can score points most efficiently per second in Autonomous Mode. With this in mind, we could simply add a two 5″ diameter tubes that were 25″ long and position them so they were at a downward angle and emptied out of the front of our robot into the Low Efficiency Goal (1 ft 6 in from the carpet). We could control small “flood gates” on the front of each of these tubes with a small HiTec servo.
cRi3D Evaluation
This robot can deposit a GEAR and ten (10) FUEL in Autonomous Mode, is optimized to have a cycle time of 15 seconds (7 cycles can be completed in Teleoperation Mode), but does not have a mechanism to be Ready For Takeoff (sorry, some of us got sick this week and missed work; but take a look at the Winch, Shift-to-Neutral, Ratcheting Gearbox from iR3 and the Afterburner Winch Kit to get your brain cooking). Also, since we can deposit a total of eight (8) GEARS in a match, if our partners can manage four (4) more GEARS we will achieve rotation of the final ROTOR and unlock the ROTOR achievement for 1 RP or 100 PoPs!
Applying our game theory tool to this conceptual robot, we could be able to achieve the following:
- “cRi3D_MAX” Autonomous Mode: 68 pts
- “cRi3D_MAX” Teleoperation Mode: 80 pts
- “cRi3D_MAX” End Game: 0 pts
The “cRi3D” would be capable of achieving 148 pts by itself in a match.
Summary
Hopefully these articles can help new teams, teams in transition, or teams that are just looking for a new and improved way to approach robot design to learn and apply an analytical requirements based approach this season. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or e-mail us at denkbots(at)gmail(dot)com!
As always, feel free to join the conversation on our Facebook or Twitter with your questions, thoughts, and feedback on these articles!