Click to watch a time-lapse of the team assembling our robot!
The team has been hard at work preparing our robot for the new challenges that were announced during the kickoff. We have made some significant modifications to our existing design to account for this year’s demand for more speed, more agility, and more accuracy than ever before. Below is a quick summary of what the team has been working on the past few weeks.
DRIVETRAIN
Dominick, our Electro-Mechanical team lead, builds one of the serve assemblies.
One of the most ambitious changes we are making to drastically increase our robot’s agility is our transition from an 8 wheel TANK drivetrain to a 4 wheel SWERVE drivetrain. In a swerve style drivetrain, all 4 wheels will propel the robot and each can rotate independently to provide on-demand 360 degree motion. This presents a unique challenge to our design and fabrication teams in addition to our programmers as we have not used this type of drivetrain before. Everything we learn this year can be used in future bots for years to come. We are so close to being able to put the wheels on the ground and start driving it around to truly get a feel for how responsive our robot will be.
ROBOT HEIGHT
Our robot on risers preparing for some mechanical tests.
Our original design had a very tall robot that would excel at shooting over the top of defenders from any position on the field. One challenge we experienced with a robot that tall is a very high center of gravity which can cause the robot to rock and tip during aggressive maneuvers. We knew right away that this was going to need to change if we wanted to compete with the best in the 2021 season agility based trials. The decision was made to lower the height of the main tower by 12 inches. We were able to do this without compromising the design of our shooter or intake. The climbing assembly was also removed as it is not needed for these challenges. All in all the CoG of the bot has been brought much closer to the ground which will help to optimize performance.
GAME DESIGN CHALLENGE
Ryder and Aiden present their game design concept to the rest of the team.
The Game Design Team has been working hard to bring their concepts from imagination to reality. Coming up with a completely unique idea is a difficult challenge. With the March deadline on the horizon they have been in high gear hashing out the details and have started to bring their game field to life via CAD. We look forward to seeing what the final product looks like in the coming weeks!