Missions and Attachments

The missions our robot does are:

Mission 1: delivers the world leaders. This mission uses the same attachment that Mission two uses to save change-out time.

Mission 2: places the levees and grabs the ice buoy.

Mission 3: pushes the ball near base into the carbon chamber, and triggers the Storm machine. This

Mission 4: grabs and places the bike, insulation and laptop in the green grid area, spins around and drops off the polar bear, snowmobile, skier, and ice buoy. This uses a attachment in the front and one on the back. The in the front is a combination of a collector area and a latch that goes up and down. This useful for backing up when you need to bring something with you. On the back, attached with attachment slots that were added on for this purpose (but are being used for other missions) and cannot be motorized, is a dumper with a lever on the bottom. When the lever catches on something, the dumper flips and dumps it's cargo.

Mission 5: flips the dam, and aligns the arrows using a program to be explained later, and ends in the yellow grid area. This attachment caused us a lot of trouble almost not getting it to work, and then we thought of using some that would flex one way but not the other, so that we could drive into the arrows and they would spin, then go backwards and it would just pass over it.

New Robot

This new robot keeps the easy in easy out attachment design, but uses two motors for steering and driving, with the third for attachments. It is much easier to use, with the quick attachment port. Here are somwe pictures.

Robot Switch

We have switched robots. Our old one had to much tension on the front pivot wheel for us to be able to fix it without a complete redsign. There were to many gears for it to pass through before it could turn anything. Our new one is much better.

Steering!

We have found a way to align the front steering mechanism!!! Jevon placed a light sensor on the front end, just above the steering mechanism. He also put a white piece on the mechanism, so that when the wheel is in a certain position, the light sensor can tell.

Points!

This week, we finally got our robot to do something!! We actually completed a mission. The robot performed well, with only a few issues. The main issue is that it is difficult to keep the front steering mechanism perfectly straight, but I have no doubt that we will find a way to resolve this before competition.

Robot Journey Part 1:

This is the journey for our robot.

We chose the robot that Peter W. built and we interviewed him to find out how he got the idea.

Last winter, we found a design idea for a moveable drive-train. Peter added a frame, wheels, and an attachment apparatus for a basic robot design. He made it so the drive-train can switch to 4 different outputs, the steering and three attachments. Later, he added bump sensors and a light sensor to make it more versatile, and also stepped up the structural support in the rear. After developing a myblock to use both bump sensors on the front as one, or individually, the team tested all the designs that Peter W. and other members had made. After the testing and speeches by various members of the team, we got a super majority (5-2) for Peter W.'s robot. Since he used his own pieces (mostly) to make it, we had to duplicate it using team pieces. We later voted, and the official name of this robot is... (drumroll please) "Alphonse"! No really, it is.