Our Robot

Our robot is called Pingosta.

Our robot was designed with modularity principles in mind. First of all, we divided the mechanical and programming work so that each could be done designed independently and then integrated into a functional robot. To accomplish this, we created a ball-collecting system that was able to pick up both types of balls as it moves through the playing field. The design of our ball-collecting system has four main components.

The first is a 10 inch-wide funnel-like structure at the front of the robot. This was implemented with two mechanical arms that can be lowered before ball-collecting. This funnel helps direct balls enter into Pingosta's 4 inch-wide mouth. But this mouth is special; it has a ball-trapping mechanism that prevents balls from exiting back into the playing field. This was especially useful to prevent loosing balls when attempting sharp turns during a round. As the robot keeps moving through the field, the balls that have already entered the Pingosta inevitably roll into the back of the vehicle where a rotating claw mechanism awaits to grab and lift them about 6 inches above the ground. It does so by pushing the ball against a green curved plate until gravity fixes the ball against the claw structure. As the claw goes even higher, the ball starts to roll down the claw's arm and another structure attached to the claw forces the ball to fall into a basket. The rotating claw, which is the main feature of our design, was originally designed to operate at much worse playing conditions. For example, at the beginning of the competition, we thought the large balls would be fairly heavy and that the walls would be 5 inches tall. Thus, we made sure that our mechanism could lift field hockey balls at least 5.5 inches high.

At the place where the claw picks up the balls, special modifications had to be made to ensure that the claw would only attempt to pick one ball at a time. The claw pushes them into a curved green plate designed to retain the ball and maintain it aligned with the mechanism. A couple of plates were placed just where the claw passes closest to the ground to ensure perfect ball alignment.

Pingosta © 2009