The Cool-Looking Thing that Does Absolutely Nothing

Team 58


Albert Lin    Ran Tao    Paul Wanda



strategy design results code

Strategy:

Ah yes, I remember when the original strategy was for a simple robot with extending arms that could quickly push balls into scoring regions. Our team actually went through several different robot concepts during the first three weeks of IAP (some partially implemented, some not). Discarded strategies included a small compact robot with large extending arms, a robot capable of placing plates/grids over the opponent's scoring regions to prevent them from scoring, a rotating platform with up to three drone robots to deploy. However, these concepts went the way of the dodo due to difficulties in early stages of construction and/or lack of faith in feasibility.

The final strategy we implemented retained aspects of several of our previous designs, realized in the robot pictured above. Basically, our strategy called for a large base station to completely prevent balls from entering the opponent's 3-point region (our starting region), a small blocking robot which would attempt to block the opponent's 2-point region by taking up space and blocking with its tether, and a main scoring robot which oriented itself and the drone and attempted to score points with its large arm. Theoretically, we could limit the opponent to scoring only in their one-point region and score enough points to defeat them.


Design:

The design consisted of three major components: the base station, the blocking robot, and the scoring robot.

 

Base Station

The base station consisted of our HandyBoard, Expansion Board, Battery Pack, IR Beacon, 4 color sensors, and the start sensor, covered by lego plates in a kind of black pyramid with ramps on the sides and two towers inopposite corners. The HandyBoard, Expansion Board, and Battery Pack were stored beneath the main platform, placed side-by-side compactly, requiring the soldering of lots of extension wiring between the HandyBoard and Expansion Board. The bottom of the Base Station was the green 10'' X 10'' Lego baseplate. The color sensors were IR-emitting diodes and photoreceivers, placed in each corner to detect the color beneath the base station for orientation. The start sensor was a phototransistor mounted in the very center of the Base Station. One tower consisted of the IR Beacon and the LCD panel from the HandyBoard. The other tower was an apparatus designed to tether the two robots.

The base station measured approximately 12''X12''X2'' (not including towers). Tether Tower stood 12'' high. IR Beacon Tower stood 17.5'' high.

 

 

Blocking Robot

The small blocking robot possessed a 27:1 gear ratio driven by a single motor. It also possessed asecond motor which operated a trigger mechanism to deploy its small rubber-band-driven arm. The arm was to knock balls away from opponents 2-point scoring region. The robot itself was designed to travel to approximately the far end of the opponent's scoring region to block opponent's robots from entering. It possessed a Lego Beam tether that was fairly inflexible when extended.

The blocking robot sat on top of the scoring robot with its beam tether placed atop as pictured to the right. It had to make a drop of above 7-inches to the playing field surface in order to deploy, a challenge of the design we overcame by creating a step on the side of the scoring robot which halved the initial drop.

The blocking robot had a range of about 5 feet.

 

 

Scoring Robot

The scoring robot had the most important role of our system. It was constructed with a 27:1 gear ratio with a single motor per wheel. However, without the burden of a HandyBoard and Batteries it proved to be quite speedy when successfully deployed. It, like the blocking robot, possessed an extra motor to deploy the large rubber-band-driven arm, to reach additional balls to score. Its tether was created from the lego treads and stretched about 7 feet.

It served as a platform for the small blocking robot, was responsible for orienting, and scoring points. It scored by driving towards our 1-point scoring region, pushing several small balls in, then backing up and attempting to push more balls into the 2-point scoring region.

The scoring robot possessed a step on its left side so the blocking robot could better deploy from atop of it. The vertical wheel pictured on the right side of the scoring robot was later removed. (it was intended to aid the robot in becoming unstuck from the walls of the playing field).


Results:

    So yeah...as the name implies, our robot did not do so hot....actually, it did quite well. We managed to make it to top 31 out of 60. Our robot won one and lost one in the prelims. First, the main scoring robot got stuck while trying to come off our platform. So we lost that round. But the second time in the prelims, we managed to pull off a perfect 180 turn, and score 7 points, beating the other team.
    In the finals (Round 3), our robot once again failed to deploy the robots correctly. The main scoring robot had to do a 90 degree turn but part of it rubbed against one of towers on the platform, causing it to turn short of 90. This led both robots to deploy incorrectly, getting stuck on the tower and in the wall barrier on the game board.
    In conclusion, our robot actually works quite well if it deploys correctly. The greatest problem to overcome is to deploy correctly. A few methods could have helped this: 1) code better- run more tests and perform turn calibrations, 2) structural design modifications- make the towers smaller or the main robot less likely to bump into them by reducing the length of the longest diagonal. For the one time during the actual competitions that our robot actually worked, it effectively scored points as well as blocked the opponent from scoring in the 2-point scoring region. If only a few more hours were spent on the robot, we really believe our robot would have performed better in the finals. It's always 'If only....' Oh yeah! and our robot won the "Most Creative Package" Award for compactly storing the handyboard in the 1-inch high platform and not on either of the moving robots!! Go 58!!

    Now for the non-competition results! The three of us had a great time doing 6.270!! Although we didn't really win many rounds, and our robot failed to deploy correctly, we learned a lot from this course. I think that's the most important thing about this class. We learned a lot about sensors, structural designs, strategies, and 'mind games,' and working together as a team.

Code:

Here is a link to our code. This code is the final version of our code. It does not contain the debugging code/tools we used, and many other functions and methods that we coded for the assignments and expected to use in our earlier strategies.

 

Holla.

- ran paul albert