Team 5

Here are pictures of our robot:

Strategy

The first part of our robot's strategy was to quickly get two balls in. We did this by having the robot orient itself away from the lip. We would then move a particular distance to the ball further from the lip. We would then close the arm catching the ball, turn around, back up against the wall, open the arm and shove our first two balls into the chute. We would then back up to the wall opposite to the lip, perform a 90 degree turn so we could then back into the wall perpendicular to the wall we were on. As we were coming across the board to put in the first two balls, we would have checked the position of the block. Knowing and having saved that away we would now move forward an ideal distance for shoving the two balls across from the block and the one ball adjacent to it. So, we would straighten ourself on the wall, open the arm and shove those three balls in. We would then have the robot try to attack the other robot for the remainder of the time.

Physical Design

Physically, the goal of our robot was to be as small and as quick as possible. The robot included a movable arm. Initially, we wanted a movable arm that closes in on a fixed, straight arm. However, after experimenting with our robot for a while, we realized that it was more useful to make the fixed arm open outward. This shape allowed us to catch balls easily. The unique shape and size of our chassis actually allowed us to fit our handyboard and battery pack with very little tape or glue. In terms of our drive train, we used a 45 to 1 gear ratio, with one motor on each wheel. In retrospect, we probably should have used an even lower gear ratio as we noticed that many robots worked well with the lower gear ratio. We used a differential drive train, with an additional wheel in the back used during turning. The back wheel was connected to a servo and also came in handy for applications like moving forward in a straight line. Our robots main body was very strong and we felt that it could take a large amount of damage. Our robot's arm, however, was a little bit flimsy. It was connected to a servo which we used to open and close the arm. Often times, the arm and servo would separate, especially if the robot bumped in to something solid. The back of our robot, however, was quite strong and we even used it to bump against the wall to straighten orientation. In terms of sensors, we used 4 IR sensors on the bottom to look at the board, as well as a bump sensor below our arm to determine when we hit the lip. We also had 2 distance sensors which we were planning to use for wall following. Our shaft encoders were mounted close to the motors to give high resolution data for distance traveled.

Results

First round

Our robot didn't work, apparently because of a problem with the starting code we were provided with. Unfortunately, we didn't discover that until after impounding. Nevertheless, we won this round by the other team disqualifying.

Second Round

10 minutes before impounding, our robot started to do crazy things, it was again due to the starting code. We were not allowed to fix the code between rounds, so we were stuck with a robot that didn't work. We lost this round, but since it was double elimination, we still qualified to the final rounds.

Third Round

We decided to try our robot for one last time, hoping that it might work. Unfortunately, it didn't do what it was supposed to do, but the other robot scored a point for us, which made it a double win, and we still qualified to the next round. At that point in time, we decided that it would be better if we withdrew.

Robot Name

By far, the most animated part of this project was selecting a name. We would have heated discussions as to what to name our robot. There was one school of thought that believed we shouldn't make fools of ourselves through the name and pick something playful, but not "stupid". Among the names suggested by this school of thought include "Big Red". Another, more classical, school of thought regarding naming felt that we should have fun with the name and make people laugh at us and with us. Among the names suggested by this school of thought are "Operation Enduring Faswa"(1), and "Beefmaster 2000/2k2". After heated intellectual debate, we were at a standstill and ended up naming our robot "team 5".
(1) Faswa means "fart" in another language.

if you want, you could take a look at our code here