FTC 2019-2020
Robotics this year has been a steep learning curve, as none of us had previous knowledge in
the design process or in the production process which involves the use of power tools. All of
the challenges we have faced in learning how to maneuver these learning obstacles have
brought our team together, as we value learning as a team process. As well as teaching
our peers, we mentor several younger FLL teams to further push our message of inspiring
the importance of robotics in young people.
the design process or in the production process which involves the use of power tools. All of
the challenges we have faced in learning how to maneuver these learning obstacles have
brought our team together, as we value learning as a team process. As well as teaching
our peers, we mentor several younger FLL teams to further push our message of inspiring
the importance of robotics in young people.
Our Robot
This year we used CAD and 3D printing to design and build our robot. We divided our problem into several main parts: intake, driving, stacking and grabbing.
Our design fully utilizes the ability to 3D print our robot. There are only 8 screws holding the complete robot together. This is an advantage because if something breaks during competition we have excellent field maintenance.
To determine how to drive the robot, we considered many different approaches. We considered multiple options for our wheels including treads, castor wheels, and omni-directional wheels. We liked swerve steering. We watched videos of another FTC team, Apple π, #2067 that was using swerve steering. We brainstormed a new design that is a differential swerve drive. Our differential swerve design is an improvement because we have more torque and it does not slip. We only have two wheels and four motors, but we have more torque as a four wheel mecanum robot. Our four motors are used for turning and driving. Another advantage is we have no exposed gears. This is an advantage because there is less risk of breakage or interference during the match unless there is debris in the field.
Our design fully utilizes the ability to 3D print our robot. There are only 8 screws holding the complete robot together. This is an advantage because if something breaks during competition we have excellent field maintenance.
To determine how to drive the robot, we considered many different approaches. We considered multiple options for our wheels including treads, castor wheels, and omni-directional wheels. We liked swerve steering. We watched videos of another FTC team, Apple π, #2067 that was using swerve steering. We brainstormed a new design that is a differential swerve drive. Our differential swerve design is an improvement because we have more torque and it does not slip. We only have two wheels and four motors, but we have more torque as a four wheel mecanum robot. Our four motors are used for turning and driving. Another advantage is we have no exposed gears. This is an advantage because there is less risk of breakage or interference during the match unless there is debris in the field.
Our Innovative Robot Design
For this Skystone season, our custom designed robot is an omni directional based design capable of moving rapidly across the track in any direction. To make this design, we 3D printed around 80% of our robot except for the structural extruded aluminum bars, the wheels, bearings, belts, lazy susans, and fasteners.
Our robot is unique because almost all of the pieces were CAD drawings that we 3D printed. We did this so we could customize our pieces to better fit the objectives of this competition. Our robot only weighs approximately 12 kg. The robot design consists of three main innovations - omni directional wheels, cartesian arms, and belt gripper. Each wheel assembly is a modular design held together by four fasteners. Printing most of our pieces is a lot cheaper too because we just pay for the filament to print the pieces which is about $20 per roll which we were able to print 80% out of our robot.
This year’s autonomous programming is also very adaptable to where we start with our competition partner. We have 4 different autonomous programs with a set starting point. We also use a script of commands as if a user is driving it. The autonomous program runs when the user initializes it. There are three innovative things about our robot -
Differential Swerve Drive
Using differential swerve drives enables us to drive accurately and with torque, as opposed to many other robots that sacrifice either torque or positional accuracy when using an omni-directional drive.Cartesian Arm
Using a cartesian arm enables us to pick up bricks while keeping the studs of the brick always facing the ceiling. This is crucial when stacking bricks.Belt Gripper
