Field Build

The alliance grid is almost complete. The last three grid pieces are assembled, they need to get bolted together and moved into place. There was good news on the charging station front today, we bent a small test piece and nothing broke. The charging station build is now full steam ahead again, the poly carbonate parts are being cut on the router. We are still waiting for our metal supplier to source us 1.75″ x 1.75″ aluminum square tube(which is taking surprisingly long).

Continued Prototyping

A group continued to test vectored intake wheels and their possible use to center the cone from the flange. The spacing is the biggest challenge right now. Too much space between the rollers and it won’t pick up the cone well enough, not enough space and you have too much compression(too much friction to center cone). They tested .75″ of compression first, this had too much friction. They removed the grip tape on the PVC roller and retested. Still too much friction. Next was 1″ this was barely able to grab the cone, not enough compression.

Our next step is testing compression between .75″ and 1″. They will also be adding more vectored intake wheels to prevent the cone from getting stuck in the gaps between wheels. Another thing to try is adding a slippery material on the back PVC roller to reduce friction.

The buddy carry prototype today concluded their testing by carrying our 2022 practice bot up the 11 degree ramp(poor substitution for charging station). The practice bot didn’t have bumpers or a battery so it only weighs around 70 lbs. From a slow start the swerve drive chassis struggled on the lip. A little bit of speed conquered the lip and the two robots drove onto the ramp.

We are happy enough with the results currently that we will be starting to make the first real iteration of the buddy lift. We don’t expected to get the first iteration perfect. There will be a few problems that will pop up and we will need to solve but we’ve learned a ton from this prototype and its time to start refinement.