2018 Robot
2018
College Park FIRST Dean's List Finalist Award- 2018
Detroit FIRST Dean's List Award - 2018
Alexandria Innovation in Control - 2018
Haymarket Judges' Award
The 2018 game's fusion of 20th century arcade gaming and 21st century robotics is possibly one of the most challenging scenarios to date, involving placing cubes in various areas to earn points. For a more detailed description of the game, see the official video reveal.
Robot Abilities
- Arcade Drive: Fittingly, arcade drive will be our drive method of choice this year. This ergonomically splits directional controls between two joysticks; coupled with our six wheel tank drive chassis, this creates a large and easily controllable wheelbase for our robot.
- Power Cube Delivery Crane: From the begining, the focus of our robot was to deliver power cubes to the scale; however, this goal posed some very specific problems. The following mechanisms are our our solutions for these issues.
- Hand and Wrist: At the end of the crane arm sits the robotic hand and wrist. Their purpose is to hold onto the power cubes. Currently, the hand consists of two "fingers" (short lengths of 80/20) that come togther via a pneumatic cyliander. This hand can be rotated in order to properly manuever the power cube.
- Crane Arm: Situated two feet above the base of the chassis itself on two 80/20 supports, the power cube crane arm is powered by a banebots motor attached to a makeshift transmission giving a high tourqe output. This output helps to lift the large, telescoping arm and the wrist and hand.
- Crane Transmission: Built onto the supporting structures of the crane arm, hand, and wrist, our makeshift gearbox takes the tourque from a banebots motor and amplifies it. This makes it possible to lift large amounts of mass.
- Climber: Our secondary objective was to climb the scale. The following are the current mechanisms we are using to do so.
- Winch: Utilizing a massive speed reduction gearbox and a large hook, our robot has the capabillity to climb the scale.
- Crane Hook: To fulfill our secondary objective, climbing the scale, we attached a large hook to the end of the robot arm. This hook is attached to a strap of webbing, which, in turn, is attached to the winch.
Programming
Just like in previous years, we used Python for our robot code. In addition to our robot code, we developed a dashboard for our touchscreen driver station. It is written in JavaScript/HTML/CSS, and communicates with the robot through a python-based tornado server. It is based on the FRCDashboard framework we developed in 2016.
We drive using a pilot-copilot operating system, with one driver controlling robot motion and the other controlling all other robot functions. This allows each driver to control their own independent task, making operating the robot more efficient.
As usual, our code is open source, and can be found on our GitHub organization. Here are some quick links:
Competition Performance
We competed at two tournaments in our local area. In our first competition at Battlefield High School, we ranked 2nd after qualifications and lead a strong alliance which sadly lost in the quarterfinals. In our second competition at Hayfield Secondary school, we were selected as members of the 2nd seed alliance and performed very well, making it to the semifinals before being eliminated. At our district competition, located at the Xfinity center in Maryland, we were also eliminated in the quarterfinals. However, based on our exemplary performance we qualified for worlds, hosted in Detroit. We performed extremely well during qualifications, however we did not move on to the elimination games, ending our season. You can find out more about our competition performance on our Blue Alliance page, and look out for videos about our competitions on our YouTube page.