2016

Ballista

Drivetrain: Bicycle chain-in-tube system powered by 4 CIM Motors with a custom gearbox. We used six 6” pneumatic wheels to go over the defenses more easily. We could cross all defenses except the drawbridge and sally port.

Arm: Our arm held all of the main features of the robot including: ball collection, ball shooting and defense manipulation. The arm was rotated by a customized linear actuator driven by a CIM motor. Large mecanum wheels allowed us to have an effective full width intake. The ball was shot by 4 Colsen wheels powered by a 2 mini CIM motors. A Logitech webcam and Nvidia Jetson TX1 is used with our vision code to determine where the center of the goal is and what speed the flywheel need to spin at to shoot the ball. The arm also allows us to manipulate many of the defenses including the cheval de frise and portcullis.

Scaler: Our robot uses two 300 lb gas springs to lift itself which allows for a sub-second climb. A large outer tube deploys with a 30 lb constant force spring, then we hook on with two custom-machined hooks. From there, we then release our gas springs to climb.</p>