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DESIGN
One main obstacle to creating a mother-runner-bot was the fact that the final design had to fit inside a 1-foot-cubed box. Because of the way we had progressed in building our robot, this meant that the runner-bot would not be able to begin the round with its wheels on the floor. A deployment mechanism allowed for the runner-bot to be temporarily stored above the main robot which, after initially orienting ourselves, would release the runner towards the enemy goal.
The runner was designed to completely prevent enemy robots from scoring – both from below and from above. Pre-loaded rubber bands would open up two sails upon deployment, which effectively made it impossible for balls to be dropped into the goal from above; additionally, the runner was wide and large enough to block balls from entering the goal from below.
Perhaps the trickiest part of the design was to have a well-functioning reel which from which “lego-wire” would be able to unwind. As it unwinds, an electrical connection would still have to be maintained with the HappyBoard without having other wires tangle up in the process. To account for this difficulty, we made use of two bump switches, whose bumps were made to press against the axle of the reel. Hence, a constant electrical connection could be kept even while the reel was spinning.
The main robot has three features: first, two distance sensors pointing 90 degrees away from each other allowed for it to orient itself in the beginning of the round (simply by determining which way it was facing based on whether or not there was a wall in front of each sensor). Second, a worm-gear controlled launch-mechanism was designed so as to deploy the runner bot and have it open its sails without interfering with any of the main robot’s parts. Third, a servo-motor controlled an extendable arm which would open up and collect two balls after the runner-bot had been deployed. Once the main robot had traveled the required distance, this same arm would partially close, pushing the two balls into our goal.