This past week we have been working on building our robot from the parts distributed to our houses. Each team member worked on a different subsystem: the chassis, the vertical intake, or the front rollers. Here is a brief description of what we did this week.
We started building the chassis of the new robot. Most of it will be repurposed from an old chassis, but with any additional parts planned out in our CADs added on or adjusted. There weren’t a whole lot of adjustments needed, the main parts that were changed were where the wheels along the C-channels/how far apart the wheels were from each other.
We also moved the already attached L-channel to what would be the back end of the chassis, oriented so that it attaches both sides of the drive train together and has one face extending upward, perpendicular to the ground, so that later the vertical intake could be attached to the back. We currently have the chassis slightly narrower than the size limit, and should be wide enough for balls to fit in without too much extra room, making it easier for the vertical intake to collect them. While the chassis alone isn’t the most stable, the vertical intake would require one end to stay open/unconnected, and it will become more stable once the intake is added since it will connect both sides.
I worked on the front rollers, originally we had created a simple side roller mechanism that served as an intake to bring the balls to the vertical intake. However, I didn't really like this version as much, and decided to modify it slightly to create a more reliable mechanism. One of my main concerns with this was that the mechanism itself was not very forgiving, in that the ball would have to come in the exact position in order to be sucked in the intake. I waned to create an intake that was slightly elastic so it could hug the ball, but still allow the ball to easily be sucked in. I had seen this been done on other robots but had never tried to do it myself. I knew that I would most likely use rubber bands as a spring in the mechanism, so i started there.
I decided to create two halves of the intake, the front one being the actual intake, and the back half being the anchor to the robot. The pivot point in between would allow the intake to adjust to the ball. I pulled these two halves together using rubber bands, which will be used as the source of elasticity in the movement of the intake. In contrast to the Fusion model, I also changed the sprockets to be bigger so that they could extend all the way back to the vertical intake.
These past few weeks I have been working on building the vertical intake of my team’s Snailbot design using our Fusion 360 model as reference.
I began by attaching 4 plates to an L channel, along with two hinges on the top for the hood, which is a piece we will attach later on. I then attached three standoffs to each plate, which are connected to C-channels. These standoffs will prevent the ball from falling out of the sides of the Snailbot. To the side of one of the C-Channels, I attached two motors along with 2 shafts which connect from the motors to the other C-channel. I will also be attaching a ramp to the bottom of the plates. It has been great to be able to continue building through quarantine and remote meetings and I have really been enjoying myself!
Next week we will finish up our subsystems, and exchange them in order to put the entire robot together!