About Devastator

Robot Abilities:

• 6 Wheel Drivetrain System (15.4 ft/sec)
• Can intake from ground
• Can load from human player
• Can transport empty cell
• Has full load of 35 balls in hopper
• Can shoot full hopper in 3 seconds
• Advanced Traction Control Algorithm

Name: Devastator
Status: Operational
Weight: 110 lbs
Dimensions: 27" x 37" x 59.5"

Competitions and Awards

• 2009 Silicon Valley Regional - Champion, Motorola Quality Award
• 2009 Las Vegas Regional - #1 Seed, Motorola Quality Award
• 2009 FIRST Championship
• 2009 Indiana Robotics Invitational
• 2009 WRRF CalGames - Champion

Design and Build of "Devastator"

Drivebase

We decided that we would build a 6 wheel drive robot this year because we thought that it would provide the neccesary manueverability and control neccesary in Lunacy.  An added bonus was that we have alot of experience building 6 wheel drive robots and gearboxes, so we were able to finish our custom gearboxes and a prototype frame by the middle of week 2.  This allowed our programmers to have over a month to work out how to best write code for driving on the low-traction surface.

Superstructure

Early in the build season, we decided that it would be helpful to shoot balls extremely rapidly.  This decision formed the basis for the rest of our design process.  We decided that we wanted to be able to intake balls from the ground and have balls loaded by a human player.  We then decided that a conveyor leading to a central hopper and then out a chute with a downwards deflector was the best way to construct our superstructure.  We analyzed our 2006 robot, which also had a conveyor and determined what areas caused problems with ball jamming in 2006.  This allowed us to move into our 2009 design with knowledge of what causes ball jams in conveyors, which allowed our 2009 robot to be virtually jam-proof.  We determined that the maximum width of balls that we could shoot out without being wider than the trailer was two balls.  We did not want to have to funnel the balls at all, because this was a key jamming point in our 2006 robot.  Therefore, we decided that our entire superstructure would be 2 balls wide.  This helped make the decision on whether to go with a long or wide robot, as we believed that we could manuever well with a long base, and the long base made our hopper much larger.

Final Assembly and Testing

As we finalized the design and started building, we found that everything worked almost exactly as planned.  We took several nights to wire the robot, cutting all wires to custom length and keeping everthing very neat and tidy.  All of the machined parts on the robot were so perfect that you hardly needed but a couple wrenches to assemble the entire robot.  The programmers uploaded their traction control code and we found that it gave us a significant traction advantage.  However the code was not perfect, and continued to be optimized throughout the season.  By the time the Silicon Valley regional came around, the robot was working perfectly, and we only had one small improvement to install at competition - the hopper backboard, which increased our ball capacity by about 10 balls.

Off to the Competition!

We are very happy with how our 2009 season went.  We won our local Silicon Valley regional and Seeded #1 at the Las Vegas Regional.  We had some bad luck in Atlanta at the championship, but managed to be picked early.  However, our alliance was overcome by an alliance that worked together flawlessly, and we were eliminated early.  After winning the Motorola Quality Award at both the Silicon Valley Regional and the Las Vegas regional, we were hopeful that our unbreakable Devastator might win the Quality Award a third time at the Championship, but it was instead won by 1717, another very high-quality west coast robot.  2009 was a great year, and we are looking forward to 2010, our 12th season of excellence.

"Devastator" Demonstration Video