Our primary function was designed to be an effective mid-field looper robot. We have a damping ramp that catches the balls off of the return tower and then directs the ball down to our "drawbridge". The drawbridge has a flipper that can direct the ball to either side of our home zone. In order to stay at our post, our robot has a set of "handcuffs" that locks us to the tower.

As you can see in the CAD gif to the right, we would pull up to the tower, then deploy our handcuffs which wedges the front of our robot onto the tower horizontal bar, and the handcuff bars keep us from being moved by countering any forces into the vertical tower bars.

What we found at the first week Bayou Regional is that our primary feature requires a good alliance in order to be fully realized. At the Bayou, we found that we relied almost exclusively on our secondary kicker system, because our alliance partners could not score the balls. Looper bots require the pump to be primed and a good "striker" bot on the alliance is necessary. To the right is also a static image of our robot locked to the tower at the Bayou.

Tower Lock Design

Tower Lock in Action

Our secondary design features makes us a very effective scoring robot if we are unable to use our looper capability due to strategy concerns or lack of good scorers on our alliance. We have a very effective vacuum ball possessor and a variable power kicker. Our robot is also able to change zones so that we can kick from any zone. We have several effective autonomous modes as well.

The .gif files that you see in this section show several clips from matches at the Bayou that highlight our capabilities. Our vacuum possessor is extremely effective and allows us to maneuver in any manner while maintaining possession of the ball. The vacuum is programmed to turn off 0.25 seconds prior to the kick bar release during a kick command. The vacuum is a standard shop-vac housing with one of the KOP Fisher Price motors driving the impellor. Our bottom vacuum hose can be easily changed to give us different trajectories.

The kicker is based around a pre-charged BIMBA cylinder that is held in place with a half-cylindrical shaft. When the kick command is given, the half-cylindrical shaft turns 90 degrees and allows the kick cylinder to swing free. This 90 degree shaft minimizes the moment required to hold the kicker bar in place. The kicker is fed from a 3 setting pneumatic system. We have 3 pneumatic pressure regulators that are adjusted to different settings. The pressure is setup so that the driver can choose which zone he is in and the kick strength is adjusted accordingly. We can score quite easily from the front and middle positions, and can clear the balls out of the far zone. Our robot was also built to clear the bump and transition between all zones.

Ball Kicker and Possessor Design

Autonomous Score through Adversity

Bump Clear and Front Score

Midfield Score

Ball Possession Showcase and Kick While Defended