Building The Game Bot: Day 4 and 5

Day 4:
We have basically finished our robot.  We made a slight modification on the arm's gears.  We also scrapped the rubber band idea.  We also did some test runs.  For some reason we didn't add a second column BR's to the axles.  This will be tomorrow's goal though.

Day 5:
Today we quickly added those BR's.  We had a small chance between our competitions.  We won every round!

Building the Game Bot: Day 3

Today, we tried attaching the arm to the body.  This didn't work, because the bot was top heavy, making it tip over.  So before we could test (due to the end of the hour), we put the arm sideways.  Hopefully, this will provide a stable way to pick up the tennis balls and footballs.  Our goal for tomorrow is to test the robot's stability, and then do some practice games.

Building the Game Bot: Day 1 and 2

Day 1:
Today we finalized our concept and we started building the base.  We also started the arm, but we didn't get very far into building the mouth.

Day 2:
Today we finished the base, and started working on the mouth and arm.  We are having a little bit of a problem with the grips.  We plan to put a plate under the mouth for a kind of platform for the balls to rest on.

Build Reflection

The best part of our robot was the back conveyor belt. It did a good job at keeping the tennis balls in the track, on their way to the basket. We could have put the mouth of our robot on a stable holder, instead of a free flapping hinge. Our next build will do okay. The crane neck will be difficult to sort out, and will have problems. We plan to have a big pincher on the end of our robot. The major problem we will have with this pincher is weight.

Free Build #2

Our free build is a bit iffy right now. We are on the idea of an arm that sucks up the tennis balls and puts them on a conveyor belt to the basket. The major problems we are crossing right now is getting a working arm to bring in the tennis balls. We plan to move the wheels further out for a farther range. Our budget is pretty good, around 110 shoebucks, even after the expensive conveyor belt links. Group Question: Our group is working together quite well. Not many fights are had, aside from the occasional crazy Cyrus rant. Jenny is very good for coming up with ideas. Cyrus is good for building structured frames. Andre is a good driver and screwing in the tiny bolts and screws.

Relay Build

This time limit challenge was stressful, but was a unique twist to a regular build. Sectioning the bot was an important thing to help us succeed and not waste time on picking up where another person left off. We probably would have sectioned it even more to maximize efficiency in our creation process. Working with a partner made the process incredibly faster. It allowed mistakes to be prevented and fixed faster. It also helped us win the awesome motor.

Free Build

We picked a direct drive train for our robot because we wanted to make it small. We also didn't need to go to fast through the course, so we focused on turning more than speed. The direct drive allowed us to have two, strong wheels. I don't believe there were any disadvantages to this drive train in the situation. If we were to put this bot into a race, we would have probably come in at last place due to no gearing. I think our bot was perfect as it was, other than the trouble we had with the faulty mini battery-packs.