Robot Design

Main Body

We decided to use a simple robot design. It is a rectangle with a few lego beams high. There is also pieces in the middle going from the front to the back to provide support for things in the middle.

Wheels / Gearbox

The gearbox, wheels, encoders, IRs are one unit. It is attached to the main rectangle with bracing. The gears are geared down 50:1 from the motor. The encoder counts ticks from a pully that is geared up from the axel spinning the wheel 5:1. As each tick is a fifth of a revolution, we can count how many times our wheel has spun around to the 30th of a turn. This means we could calculate distances to within a few centimeters.

Servo Drive

Initially, we tried castors, but they did not work properly. Our final robot had a wheel driven by a servo that directed our robot. It mounted on the center bracing.

Claw

Our claws were mounted to the front corner of our robot. They stuck directly into servos that sat in the front corners of our robot. On the bottom, they were supported by legos that extended from the bracing for the servo.

Flag wheel

A large wheel was mounted horizontally on the back of our robot in order to turn the flagbox gears. This was braced into the back of our robot. Above it were lego pieces that extended a little beyond the reach of the wheel to help the robot align itself with the flat edge of the walls and the flagbox. Home | Design | Code | Tips