First Robotics Competition 2017

During my second season with the USYD Drop Bears, I was selected to be team captain. This meant that I was responsible for delivering a robot on time and within budget. While only having prior experience as a member of the manufacturing team, I now had to coordinate both mechanical, electrical and software teams, as well as manage team sponsorship, events, training and scheduling during build season. It was a steep learning curve but a very rewarding experience.

This build season we have worked hard to design, manufacture and program an industrial sized robot for the FRC Steamworks challenge. Our robot had to be able to negotiate around the field to pick up and deposit gears onto the airship, as well as climb a rope at the end of the 2 ½ minute game.

The short clip below shows the team's autonomous routing, which is excecuted in the first 30 seconds of the game. We worked hard not only to achieve the goal of depositing the gear, but also to complete this reliably.

The robot needed to climb a rope at the end of the game to gain extra points. We developed a winch system with a pneumatic piston to lock the rope into place then starting the climb.

Deploying the cog was difficult for drivers due to the difficulty in fine alignment of the robot close to the target. With a tank drive base rather than a swerve, it was harder to adjust side to side in small increments. The team mounted the entire deployment mechanism on a sliding rain, to automatically align and deploy the game piece. This relied on computer vision to track retro-reflective targets. The driver would bring the robot close to the target then activate the system, which would then take control of the robot for the deployment process.

For this mechatronic system the team was awarded the Innovation in Controls Award at the Southern Cross Regional, and the Creativity Award at the Western Canada Regional.