Blog - 2017
FRC Day 3 Build Blog
Day 3: Progress in Prototypes
Prototyping
Double Wheel Vertical Flywheel
Today, we worked on assembling the Double Wheel Vertical Flywheel. Taking the parts from last build, we assembled it using the new VersaPlanetary gearboxes and encoders we received. We assembled the flywheel to our previous spec, but we had problems with the gears we had in stock. We changed the ratio in CAD and laser cut a new plate. After doing so, we assembled the flywheel. While the flywheel worked well after changing to polyurethane, the conveyor system failed. Rather than cutting a new plate, we cut a bearing hole and inserted a hex shaft on the inside of the polycord, essentially acting as a tensioner. This worked relatively well, but needs further refinement. We did prove our concept, and will further iterate to better understand how best to integrate our design with the robot.
Testing:
For the Double Wheel Variable Compression Vertical Flywheel, we assembled the majority of the pieces and only need to insert the wheels to begin testing.
Fuel Intake
We finished assembly and began testing the belt intake, which was very fast when pulling balls in, but protruded several inches beyond the bumper. We began to design a new intake today, which will be much more compact and will therefore allow for a larger hopper and more room for other systems. This intake uses no belts, and two polyurethane rollers pull the balls up and over the bumper into the hopper. This removes the inefficiency and added complexity of belts, and makes the whole design cleaner and simpler. The intake's design is finished in CAD, but it has not been built or tested yet. On Friday we will laser cut it, finish assembly, and test it to see how effective it it..
Testing:
Gear Intake
The Gear Intake development process continued today with the construction of a recently CADed design that has an inner slider in order to pinch the gear between the claws and itself. This process was difficult because the .25” plyowood that was used for construction is actually .2”, so the original design needed to be modified slightly so that all the pieces would fit together. Other small improvements involved adding polyurethane strips to the inner slider and the claw so that the whole system grips onto the gear well.
Testing:
Drivebase
We finished an initial weldment of the general structure modeled after our 2014 robot and the side rails/bearings/housings modeled after our 2016 robot. Taking bumpers and an intake into account, the frame was dimensioned to fit within the 36" by 40" by 24” size limit.
In addition, we designed the drive train gearbox in CAD with 2 CIM motors per side in a 2 stage reduction with a dog shifter and pancake piston to have 2 speeds: low gear for pushing force and high gear for maneuverability. With the design almost done, we only have to add spacers, intermediate shaft, standoffs, screws and nuts, retaining screws, and pocketing to the CAD (members can access the design from pdm under the name 254-17-A-0300 Gearbox if you want to see or help design it).
Climber
Today, we designed and began to build prototype mechanisms for climbing the rope. The prototypes for actually holding onto the rope included variations combs with differing spacing. We began working on a standard mount for each type of prototype climbing roller. We decided to use a VersaPlanetary gearbox in our build, using a gear ratio of 1:90 to heavily reduce the rpm of the motors from ~18,000 RPM and increase torque to ensure the robot could lift itself. We then assembled the multi-stage gearbox, attached the motor, and soldered the battery leads. Lastly, we began the process of building a frame and prepared the parts to completely assemble the mounts next build.
Programming
Control Board
On Wednesday, we met up and worked on control systems for recent prototypes and we also continued developing pixycam communication. We added three talons to the prototype board to support the growing complexity of prototypes.
Robot Programming
With a prototype board ready, we added feed-forward PID control to our two-roller shooter prototype. PID is a control loop that keeps a constant motor speed, allowing us to effectively test the shooter prototype.
We also rewrote a majority of our code using elements from last year’s code, to avoid re-inventing the wheel. The new code is far more scalable and efficient. In particular, we implemented Loopers, a structure that runs code extremely fast, and compartmentalized our code into the various (potential) subsystems on the robot. We also discussed code conventions to ensure uniformity in the code down the road.
However, we had issues with compiling and deploying the code due to issues with the motor controller driver. We’re resolving those issues down the road.
Camera Connectivity
We worked on camera connectivity, finishing a testable version of an SPI driver built on WPILib for the RoboRIO. Previously, we built a native library that allowed us to communicate with the PixyCam over USB and wrote a JNI wrapper to let us invoke the native code from Java, but today we encountered issues when connecting to a physical PixyCam. Rather than debugging the USB connection, we decided to ensure that we could build a reliable SPI driver first, as we are confident that we will be able to communicate with the camera over SPI. Though a USB interface would be optimal, it is significantly complex and we plan to work on that functionality once the SPI driver is confirmed to work as expected.. We added a new pinout to the PixyCam and connected it to an old RoboRIO board for testing. To help with testing, we connected the PixyCam to a computer and trained it to recognize the yellow game balls. In the upcoming builds, we will proceed with testing our SPI driver with an old RoboRIO so we have a working method of connection for this year’s code.
FRC Day 2 Build Blog
Day 2: Prototyping
Today, we continued our work on prototyping designs for the shooter, intake, and drivebase. Our programming team also worked through a variety of projects including camera calibration and configuring the RoboRIOS.
Shooters
Double Wheel Horizontal Flywheel
We assembled the feeder for the horizontal flywheel shooter using three wheels of two different sizes to optimize contact with fuel balls. We determined that we would either use polycord or rollers for the feeder. However, due to availability of resources, however, we decided to prototype with a wheel roller. The horizontal flywheel was ready for testing but is still waiting on more planetary gearboxes.
Double Wheel Vertical Flywheel
Today we continued working on developing a double wheel vertical flywheel. In the process, we tried to optimize throughput with the limited space available on the robot. Initially starting with a hand loaded prototype, we combined the shooter with a conveyor prototype to remove the variables of human error.. We managed to design and laser cut the sidepanels for the prototype, and began assembly. We have organized the VEX Pro VersaPlanetary gearboxes and will implement it on Wednesday.
Another project based off a double wheel vertical flywheel aimed to optimize the best materials and fuel compression to maximize accuracy and shot speed. We spent the build designing a model in Solidworks to later be laser cut.. By the end of build, we acquired all the materials for the prototype including the 80/20 Extrusion Material, T-nuts, modified Versa Side Bearing Motor Gussets, 2 x 4 Wood Blocks, Bearings, and laser cut to design ½” Plywood.
Catapult
We improved the catapult and eventually hit an accuracy rate of 15/15 into the high goal. The improvements we made include:
-
Adding a stronger shaft
-
Tightening the medical tubing that provided the power to pull the shaft to the hard stop
-
Moving the hard stop and axle into the optimal position
-
Figuring out how to calibrate the machine
-
Securing the catapult to a piece of plywood so it wouldn’t move after every shot.
The design still needs a lot of improvements based on the power applied and the contact with the ball to make it into the boiler quickly and consistently.
Testing:
Intake
Today we took the intake prototype from yesterday and added several more surgical tubing belts in order to pull in more balls at once. In addition, we resized it for better geometry and added a CIM motor for lots of power. The results are very successful, and we are able to rapidly suck in several balls at once over a bumper, meeting our original goal for this prototype. The next step is to mount it on our practice drivebase and see how well it can intake once in a robot. We prototyped this specific intake because we have used similar ones in the past successfully, but were unsure how they would react to the plastic balls compared to more traditional foam balls.
Testing:
Drivebase
Today for the 2015 Deadlift drivebase we installed a new radio with updated 2017 firmware in order to successfully connect to the driver station. Additionally we experimented with different types of wheels. Initially we started with colson wheels on the outside and an omni-wheel for turning. The idea was that due to the center drop of the drivebase we would only be on an omni, and a colson wheel at all times. In order to optimize for turning we changed to all omni wheels, yet the turning was erratic so we think another set of wheels would be best for this game.
Gear Intake
Today we worked on the gear intake for the 2017 FRC Robot. The process involved spending a little bit of time on CAD to create a preliminary design, and then following up by actually laser cutting the wood pieces and then putting them all together. After that, we experimented with different heights for the grabber pieces on the claw to figure out which angle would be optimal in sliding up and over the edge of the gear. The next step in this project will be to cad a significantly more robust version of a similar design, as well as add a system for actually “grabbing on” to the gear so that we can manipulate it.
Testing:
Programming
A lot got done in programming today! We had our first build meeting and we will be having subsequent meetings every build where we will get anyone involved who wants to work on something. During this build we divided the work into the following tasks:
-
Installing updates onto drivers stations
-
Camera USB to RoboRIO Communication
-
Camera Calibration
-
Programming prototype boards
Driver Stations
We successfully updated the driver station software on the driver station computers. Now, everything works well.
Camera USB to RoboRIO Communication
Since last build, we successfully cross-compiled libpixyusb to the RoboRIO’s ARM architecture using QEMU on Ubuntu. We then created a JNI for it so that we can integrate it into our codebase. However, it has not been tested yet and we will be doing this throughout the week. If his port works, then we will not be using SPI with the Pixy Camera
Camera Calibration
The goal of calibration is to get rid of the distortion in the camera. Here are some screenshots that illustrate this distortion:
After the calibration, the dots in the image or more linear and the edges of the dot grids are parallel. This is the result of the calibration:
With better calibration, we will be able to more accurately approximate the angles of the goals so that we can make the targets. The calibration above isn’t perfect, but we are still working on making it better. The current issues that we have encountered are mostly due to the low resolution of the pixy camera which prevents OpenCV from recognizing the dots at more oblique capture angles. If it were higher resolution, it would generate a more accurate calibration.
Robot Programming
This build, we successfully configured the RoboRIOs and programming computers to use the latest version of FRC software, albeit with a few hiccups. In techno-speak, the RoboRIO wasn't assigning itself a static IP address, leading to communications problems. The programming subteam was able to overcome this issue, albeit with a temporary fix.
FRC Day 1 Build Blog
Day 1: Kickoff & Testing
Today was the first day of the FRC build season. The new game, FIRST Steamworks, was revealed, and we began evaluating strategies and testing prototype mechanisms for our 2017 robot.
Helpful Links
The game manual and rules are linked below. All team members should familiarize themselves with the manual, especially the Match, Game and Robot sections.
Game animation:
Prioritization & Strategy
To evaluate potential strategies for our team, we estimated times to perform tasks such as picking up and depositing gears, collecting balls, hitting hoppers, etc. We then compared that time to the point value of each task to determine a priority list of items to prototype as well as to begin match strategy.
For 2 strong robots working together in eliminations, an optimal strategy could be to each perform a 2 gear autonomous and then in teleop do 2 “hybrid cycles” in which they each score both a round of 100 balls and a gear followed by 2 “ball cycles” where they score only balls. This would produce a maximum score (assuming 80% shot accuracy) of 410 points. Perhaps the third robot could play defense rather than contributing offensive points.
More information on this strategic analysis can be found in this spreadsheet.
Prototyping
Today, we started by prototyping various mechanisms to accomplish each of the tasks in the game. Later, we will work to evaluate the prototypes, determine which are most promising, and integrate them together for more comprehensive testing.
Shooters
High Throughput Shooter –
We discussed creating a shooter which can shoot a large number of balls very quickly (goal is 50 in 1 second). This will need to be designed, built, and tested in the coming week.
Single Wheel Vertical Flywheel – back spin –
We made a prototype for the vertical flywheel by modifying the hood of dropshot. We found that the shots often were inconsistent depending on the orientation of the wiffle ball holes.
Testing:
Single Wheel Vertical Flywheel – front spin – We reversed dropshot and tilted it backwards to use the same flywheel but give the balls front spin instead of backspin. The balls still veered and had the same problem as backspin
Testing:
Double Wheel Horizontal Flywheel – This looks like the most promising prototype we have so far. It reduces spin on the ball to minimize the wiffle effect on trajectory. We are going to change this to a vertical double flywheel so that we can lengthen the wheel and shoot multiple balls side by side.
Testing:
Ball Intake – The preliminary plan is to have the bumper not at the limit of the maximum size so that we have room to deploy an intake in front of the robot (past the bumper, but within the maximum size). Although we could have a bumper gap, the maximum gap is about 14” and this setup would allow us to intake the full width of the robot which could be much faster and easier. It has been modeled in CAD and laser cut, but we have yet to assemble the prototype.
Catapult – A prototype was started for a spring-powered catapult shooter. This prototype needs some additional work to determine feasibility.
Gear Manipulation Mechanisms
Hook – We prototyped a one-way latch that is latches into one of the holes in the gear and then is pulled back into the robot to hold the gear with friction. This could then be actuated to tilt up and down to move from a floor-loading position to a hanging position. We made a new version with two hooks to allow for more misalignment when picking up the gears on the field.
Claw – A second prototype was built with two motorized wheels which intake the gear off the ground. The wheels are mounted to sprung arms which open around the gear as it moves in. It seems to work, but the quick prototype has the wheels spinning too quickly. We are going to work on slowing it down.
Drivebase – We have tentatively ruled out any sort of strafing drivebase because we don’t think it will be necessary. We will most likely use a 6-wheel or 4-wheel drive robot, as the team has high familiarity with these designs and should be able to construct them effectively and quickly. We are currently working on evaluating the best wheel configuration to have the ideal maneuverability by adapting Deadlift’s (2015 robot) drivebase with different wheels. We ran into some minor issues with radio connectivity, but we plan to fix this by using a newer radio. We need to finish the prototype.
Rope Climbing
Comb prototype – We discussed using a custom rope for hanging, likely a narrow, strong rope (like paracord) with knots. This prototype uses a comb-like hook to grab the knots and reel in the rope to pull up the robot and hang. We have tested it passively, but have yet to determine if it can support a robot’s weight.. There is still lots of work to be done, especially in optimizing the shape of the comb / spool so that the radius does not change too much as it rotates (necessary for gearing optimization).
Testing:
Programming
We started programming this season by creating a private code repository on Github based off what we did last year. We then started working on our demo boards, imaging them with the new 2017 firmware and installing driver station software to them. We also began experimenting with a Pixy camera for vision tracking. It seemed promising and easy to configure, but it didn't communicate easily with the roboRIO so more work is needed.
