Goals

• Create an electrical board that successfully provides power and data to all sections of the robot that need it.
• Make the Control System look good
• Use Optical Encoders to allow the robot to have preset heights on the arm
• Use the Camera to allow the robot to score in autonomous mode

Design Process

One main difference between this year's robot and bots of previous years is that it was extremely under-wieght the whole time. We have never had this problem before. We almost always find ourselves struggling to "swiss-cheese" our robot the last few days. We were pleasantly surprised this year when weighing the robot so far by week four that it was only 75 pounds, even with 90% of our finished mechanics. By the end, the robot was probably only barely above 100 pounds.

In an effort to add weight to the robot, we decided that we would use quarter inch clear polycarbonate as our electrical board. Since weight wasn't an issue, we could use this. In the past we'd been forced to use thin plywood to cut down on weight. We could also be a little more decorative with the board because of weight, so we decided that instead of squishing all the electronics onto one board, we made a second level that holds four speed controllers and the breaker panel.

 

Camera System

The Camera System uses two servo motors to control the pan and the tilt of its field of view. The servos allow us to know what angle the camera is looking and adjust the robot in relation to the green light.

The Autonomous mode this year appears that it will be successful. During practice, the robot managed to score autonomously several times. With a little more tweaking, it appears that the robot will be able to score autonomously upwards of 50% of the time.

The Robot's Camera Assembly