During the first week of planning, the team discussed the robot design and divided it into four main subsystems: the intake, the indexer or hopper, the shooter, and the drive base.
This post discusses how the intake design evolved and where the team ended up at the end of week two. With support from one of the mentors, the students working on the intake focused on mapping out the full path of the ball using basic information from the other subsystems. The team knew the intake had to pick the ball up from the ground, move it over the bumper, and feed it into the indexer.
At this early stage, the team assumed the ball would continue moving downward due to gravity. Because of this, the intake needed to lift the ball to the highest point before it reached the shooter. The students even used basic trigonometry to estimate angles and distances.
By this point, the drive base group had decided on a 27.5 inch square robot. This decision helped limit and guide the team’s early intake designs.
One significant area of growth for the team this year has been the students’ CAD skills. The team uses Onshape, and during the offseason the lead mentor encouraged students to work through the FRC Design Onshape tutorials. This work has had a major impact on student involvement, with more students actively contributing to the CAD models and drawings.
The team also enjoys prototyping and seeing ideas work in real life. Many different designs were considered, but two stood out as the top options.
The first option was a single roller with a fixed kicker bar to pop the fuel up into the indexer. The second option used two powered rollers with a deflecting plate to guide the fuel in the correct direction.
One of the key FRC ideas the team wants to achieve with the intake is called “touch and own.” This means that once the robot touches a piece of fuel, it should not push it away or chase it around the field. Instead, the fuel should be quickly pulled in and secured inside the hopper.
There are still a few concepts the team is working through. One challenge is deciding how the intake should extend and retract. Another concern is whether the intake can still retract if the hopper is already full. The team is also thinking about whether not being able to retract the intake could make it harder to drive back to the scoring area.