scoring |
Our 2017 robot was equipped with a shooter and a ground intake mechanism. The ground fuel intake could collect about 60 fuel pieces from the game field, and funnel them into the magazine for storage. Using a belt and roller system, the fuel then fed from the magazine into the shooter mechanism. The shooter had two different flywheels that allow two streams of balls to be fired at once, giving the robot the ability to achieve up to 40 kPA in autonomous mode. On the back of the robot, there was a gear intake designed to intake a gear from the ground. A pop-up roller combined with AndyMark compliant wheels trapped the gear to be scored on the airship lift.
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Drivetrain
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The West Coast Drive used on the Pomelo Pummeler had two omni wheels in the front, and four colson wheels to provide traction in the middle and back. There were four CIM motors allowing the robot to hit a top speed of 17.5 feet per second.
A wheel and vertical joystick made driving the Pomelo Pummeler easy by controlling the angle and speed of the robot respectively. The wheel allowed for tight turns to be executed, maneuvering the robot smoothly around defense, while the throttle joystick enabled the driver to easily score gears and shoot fuel. An Xbox 360 game controller was used to control the other mechanisms on the robot, including the ball and gear intakes, the magazine conveyors, and the climber. A small screen was also used by the drive team to view video streamed from a camera mounted above the ground gear mechanism. The feed showed gears that cannot be seen by the drive team, and makes gear acquisition and scoring much easier.
Unique to 2017, the Pomelo Pummeler was equipped with an NVIDIA Jetson TX1 mounted to an Orbitty carrier board. A green LED highlights the retroreflective tape that surrounds the front of the boiler. The Microsoft LifeCam 3000 mounted in front of the shooter tracked the reflective tape and the green light that it reflects, and the Jetson TX1 inputs the camera feed into custom vision processing software. This allowed the robot to automatically align and shoot during a match. Along with the camera, a signal LED strip were used to communicate different messages to the drive team. The LEDs signal different autonomous routines, gear acquisition and scoring, vision status, and more. The VRMs (voltage regulator modules) gave power to custom circuits and controllers.
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Click here to see more renders of our 2017 robot.