Monthly Archives: February 2024

As February comes to a close, students have been hard at work during their break. Week seven has led our robot to progress nicely. All of our sub teams have been working hard to prepare for our first competition of the year, Silicon Valley Regional. This week, the arm, shooter, and intake have been mounted and wired onto our robot. Our subsystems were assembled separately and, when done, mounted on the drivetrain. We designed around serviceability and ease of understanding in preparation for competition. All power wires were labeled and routed separately from CAN and sensors for clarity in robot inspections, debugging, and replacing of parts. Wire connectors and extensions, for example, are all centralized in certain accessible locations to avoid having to access our protected upside-down control system board. The programming team has been successful in identifying the initial x and y velocities for shooting while moving (SWM). We can make various test cases, and make them work. We are now working on successfully integrating drivetrain into the test cases by setting drivetrain velocities and attempting to shoot at the actual pose of the speaker. The Vision team has been increasing the accuracy of our computer assisted game piece acquisition. This includes training better machine learning models and fixing the distortion of the camera. We have also [...]

Week 6 has ended on a high note, and our team has been hard at work as we continue to build our 2024 robot. As our first competition at Silicon Valley Regional approaches, we need all hands on deck in order to maximize our chances of success! Over the past two and a half days, the Machining team has made much progress with the intake and outtake. We have been busy machining many hex shafts for intake and outtake assembly. In addition, we used the CNC router to manufacture many plates for intake and have recently started manufacturing for the arm. The Machining team plans to CAM the arm plates, then use the CNC router, all for assembly on Wednesday. We have also been working on the bumpers, assembling and testing them for fit. The CAD has been finalized and ready for manufacturing. During the beginning of the week, hardware teams worked on finishing and approving the CAD of the intake for manufacturing, then assembling and testing the intake on the drivetrain. Additionally, the shooter has been assembled and will be tested on its own and then on the arm. The arm is currently being machined, and some key parts are still being shipped, so it will be assembled soon. The CADers are working on putting the finishing [...]

Week 5 is a busy one for team Iron Claw as we prepare for our upcoming competition. Our CADers have been working day-in-and-out, finalizing the designs of the intake, shooter, and arm. Last week, we decided to change the intake from over the bumper to under the bumper to provide adequate space for an object detection camera, as well as to make sure the intake is as robust as possible. With the addition of our under-the-bumper intake, we eliminated one degree of freedom from our robot. Additionally, we began assembling our prototype, and tested intaking as well as centering as it goes into the shooter. With the new intake, we tested out two centering mechanisms. The first was a set of polycarbonate plates that were bent to create ramps between the rollers. In our testing, we tried several types of surfaces including smooth polycarbonate, sanded polycarbonate, velcro loop, and masking tape. While sanded polycarbonate showed potential, we decided that none of the materials were successful enough as the note jammed on the side. Due to the failure of the plates, we decided to experiment with a pair of passive wheels that would direct the game piece toward our shooter. This seemed to work better, but we are transitioning to a powered wheel solution for the final design, using [...]

Week four has been another successful one for the team as our CAD team worked hard to complete our subsystem CADs. After the conclusion of week three, our DVC, the Decision Voting Council, has decided to implement a continuous intake, and a top-down shooter, combined with a hook to allow us to climb. For our shooter, first, we had to work out an accuracy issue with the original prototype. We determined that we needed to fix an RPM issue with the motors, then fixed and rewired the motors with our test bed. In terms of CAD, the pivot point for the shooter was changed. In addition, we updated the shooter to be more secure with polycarb plates on each side and better bearing security. The flywheel was also altered to have more rigidity than the original prototype. For the indexer, we plan to use polycarbonate tube rollers. Regarding the climber, the plan is to have hooks on the shooter which will hook the chain and pull our robot off the ground. Not much has been done in this regard so a more detailed update will come next week. Our design team also decided to switch from an over-the-bumper intake to an under-the-bumper intake due to issues with vision camera visibility and robustness of the original intake design. The [...]