Marauder – 2012
Game robot was designed for: Rebound Rumble
Brief Description of game: Rebound Rumble is played by two competing alliances on a flat, 27 x 54 ft field. Each alliance consists of three robots. They compete to score as many basketballs into their hoops as they can during a 2 minute and 15 second match. The higher the hoop in which the basketball is scored, the more points the alliance receives. For more information on the game visit http://www.usfirst.org
Frame/Drive System: This year we decided to use the “Kitbot on Steroids” for our frame and drive system. This uses the materials from the AndyMark part of the Kit of Parts to create the drive system and frame. We dropped the center wheel to help with turning. It uses a CIMple gearbox with 2 CIM motors and drives the back and middle wheels directly.
Manipulator: This year, we made a shooter and elevator system to play the game. We run a two tier elevator; the first tier picks up the balls from the floor and holds them at the top, the second moves the ball straight up, bringing it up to two sets of wheels that shoot them out. Both of the elevators – consisting of 2 sets of pulleys – are run by window motors.
New Concepts: This year was the first year we didn’t spend too much time deciding on the frame we would use. We decided right away that we would use the “Kitbot on Steroids”, which gave us more time to design the manipulator. This year we had a robot build schedule which we followed some of the time. It’s something we would like to implement more in later years. The biggest accomplishment of this year was our 3D printing process. We Inventored different parts – including the pulleys we used for the elevators – then they were brought to one of our mentor’s personal 3D printers and physically printed them.
Components Discarded: There were a slew of different ideas played around with for our mechanism. There were catapults, swinging arms, and shooters of all varieties. We did a gladiator style elimination with the ideas lead by one of our mentors, which consisted of looking at each idea individually, defending our ideas, and nixing anything that couldn’t be defended properly. That brought us to our final design of a wheel driven shooter.