Philip went over to the TRA (Tacoma Robotics Alliance), where 3781 used to be built in 2011 and 2012. The two teams that were there were way farther ahead. 3393, Puyallup High School Robotics Club, have a pick-up system almost identical to ours. Their shooting system is based on our failed "boot" shooter. They lift the ball to the top of their robot, and use a pneumatic piston to swing a arm towards the ball, with a weighted metal brick at the end. 2557, SOTABots (School of the Arts Robotics), pick up the ball like a vacuum cleaner (but with wheels instead of suction), and use a mini-catapult that is spring loaded. Both teams have great ideas, and gave 3781 tips on how we could improve systems on our robot.
In addition to visiting the teams, TRA builds a practice field every year of the year's game. They weren't completely finished, but they were done with a majority of it.
Doing a series of tests, we found that the low goals are quite difficult to simply roll the balls into the goal:
The same goes for pushing with bumpers; it isn't easy:
On the bright side of things, the high goals aren't that hard to get the ball into. It doesn't require much aim, you just have to have the mass to bump it into the goal:
From the looks of things, our shooter looks like it will work quite fine.
No comments:
Post a Comment