The Sensational Seven

Team 147852019-2020 SeasonThe Sensational Seven

We are the Sensational Seven. We are a community-based team that started out last year with a group of seven homeschoolers that wanted to compete in a robotics league. We have recruited two new members and are now considering ourselves a Katy area robotics team. We learned a lot in our rookie year and now are hoping to advance to the regional competition. That would be a great way to demonstrate what we have learned through our robotics program.

Table of Contents

Team Member Bios……………………………………………………………………………………..Section 1

Business Plan………………………………………………………………………………………………Section 2

Engineering………………………………………………………………………………………………..Section 3

Compeitions and Scrimmages…………………………………………………………………….Section 4

Programming………………………………………………………………………………………….....Section 5

Competition Scouting…………………………………………………………………………………Section 6

Design meetings…………………………………………………………………………………………Section 7

Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………………Section 8

BIOS

Liam Jones

Age: 15 Grade: 9th

Hallo, mate! I’m full of comic relief and baloney! I have no life, do not desire one, and am still somehow useful. I help with the manual labor, putting Jeffery (the robot) together, and driving him.

Aiden Quinton

Age: 14 Grade: 8th

I am currently in 8th grade, and this is my second year as a Sensational Seven member. My main role on our team is programming, but I also occasionally help with building and maintain the engineering notebook. I hope to use the information I learned with robotics to someday get a job in the STEM field, like a job at NASA.

Jack Jones

Age: 13 Grade: 8th

I am Jack Jones, a general-purpose human who likes dad jokes, camping, literature, and programing. I especially like to learn new things and hear insights

on the things I learn. On the team, I help with the programming and share robot designs that I think would help with the current competition, and sometimes I operate Creo, the CAD program we use. I hope to implement the things I learn on the team to enrich my problem-solving and programming skills.

Ian ZimmermannAge: 14 Grade: 8th

This is my second year on the Sensational Seven team. I take part in a lot of the jobs on the team and like doing everything, but my main job is to reach out for the team, update the website, and hunt for sponsors. I thoroughly enjoy being on this team and being part of robotics. I am a giant book nerd and I love pets.

Ethan Quinton

Age: 12 Grade: 6th

I am in 6th grade, and this is my second year on the Sensational Seven. My main job on the team is building. I enjoy building my ideas. Someday I hope to use what I learn in robotics to build and design houses.

Slater PayneAge: 12 Grade: 6th

I am in 6th grade. This is my first year doing robotics. My main job on the team is building Jeffery (the robot). Last summer I went to the Marine Military Academy (MMA) and I hope to go again this summer. I hope my ideas do good for the team and the robot.

Matilda Jones

Age: 11 Grade: 6th

I am Matilda Jones, and I like reading books, riding my bike, and hanging out with my friends. I joined The Sensational Seven because I wanted to know more about building and coding, and to get better with working with people. I hope that the skills I learn in robotics will help me later in life.

Engineering Section

Robot Base Design

Design 1: Omni wheels used at each of the four corners. This allows the robot to be very maneuverable. It allowed us to drive forward and backwards, turn and strafe. Strafing gives and advantage when needing to adjust the robots position without turning.

Design 2: The omni wheels were replaced with mecanum wheels. The mecanum wheels have better traction but able to maneuver as good as the omni wheels. This also allowed more room inside the boundary of the robot base.

Robot CAD Arm Design:The programming team used Creo to design some arm prototypes.

1. Servo-based arm. We designed an arm with servos and then DC motors.

2. Motor based lift. We designed a lift system with a claw to pick and stack the stones.

Build team Arm Design:The build team designed several arms to test the lifting of the stones.

1. Servo based arm that pivots like a scorpion tail. The servos were too weak to move the other parts. It could not pick up stones.

2. Telescoping arm that works like a firetruck ladder. The arm could not drop low enough to reach the stones on the ground. The motor also kept dropping down when you stopped pushing the controller joystick.

3. Servo based pivoting arm. We used a pivoting arm that had an elbow so we could reach further. The servo was too weak to pick up the arm. We tried to add rubber bands but it was still too weak.

4. Motor based pivoting arm. The motors were stronger than servos but could not easily control them. The arm was too heavy and kept crashing down when you stop pushing the joystick.

5. Motor based pivoting arm with worm gears. We learned that the worm gears do not

back drive so they would be able to lift the stone and stay in position without falling back down.

6. Motor based pivoting arm with an addition of rotating turret design. We thought that if our robot could sit in one position and the arm could do all the work of stacking, it would much faster. We add a motor attached to a Lazy Susan.

7. Forklift design. We attended a region workshop and scrimmage and saw that our

current design was not very efficient. It was taking too much time to lift stones. We

decided that an elevator lifting system would be easier and more reliable. The worm gears also kept slipping because the set screws kept unscrewing.

Build team claw for lifting Skystones

The build team designed several claws to pick up and stack the stones on the arm mechanism.

1. Servo based lifting claw based on the principles of a cement barrier lift. This proved to be too big and did not pick up the stones very well.

2. Servo pinching design. This design used a servo to pivot an arm to hold on the stone. This claw was very strong in picking up stones.

3. Servo pivot design

4. Tetrix game specific claw design. The claw design was used but modified to work with our arm design.

Build team foundation pulling mechanism

The build team designed a mechanism to pull the foundation during the endgame.

1. Side Servo rotation

2. Front Servo drop and pull

3. Dual front servos drop and pull

Build Team stone delivering mechanism.

The build team determined that it was useful to have a separate mechanism to push stones to the other side of the field into the building area.

1. Wheels. The build team tried to use wheels for an intake to be able to pick up stones and move them under the alliance bridge. The wheels never could grip the stones quite right.

2. Dual Servo. The build team designed another claw type grabber to pick up stones and deliver them under the alliance bridge. This one worked much better than the wheels.

Autonomous Programming Design

Foundation Side

1. Time based

It used time-based movements to maneuver around the field by going straight for a while then strafed to the left and pushed to foundation to the wall, went back strafed to the left again and pulls the foundation in to the building site, then strafes to the right and parks under the bridge.

2. Distance sensor based

It uses one distance sensors to maneuver around the field by going straight till it detects a certain distance from the wall and strafes to the left and pushes the foundation to the wall and drives back and strafes to the left and pulls the foundation back into the building site, the strafes to the right and parks.

Stone Side

1. First program was designed to capture the first stone and deliver under the skybridge

2. Second iteration used a single distance sensor to determine where the stones were. A color sensor was used to determine where the skystone was. It used a change in hue to distinguish between yellow stone and the dark color of the skystone.

3. Third iteration used two additional distance sensors were added to determine where the robot was in relation to the walls.

Lessons Learned

1) The TensorFlow did not work right so we decided to use a color sensor. We were able to

use the hue, saturation, and value to determine the difference between the yellow

stones and the skystone. The dark skystone would given much different values than the

yellow stone.

2) Regular gears did not work with arm mechanism. We tried servos, motors, different

gears, and we then settled on using a worm gear. The worm gear kept stripping on the

axle so we have to change the design altogether. The lift was much more consistent.

3) Time-based autonomous does not work. It is not reliable and the success of the program

depends a lot on where you put the robot at the beginning.

Competitions and Scrimmages

1. League Competition:

We used the robot with the lifting arm and pinchers in the front.

We used a foundation autonomous but the stone side was not ready.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The foundation autonomous worked well. We scored pretty high points with our teammates.

WHAT WENT WRONG

The robot was to slow to maneuver around the field. And the servos needed to be stronger at the pivot point. We accidently put the robot backwards during the autonomous period.

WHAT WE CHANGED

We added stone autonomous. We added servo reinforcements from keeping the servos from breaking.

2. League Competition:

We used the same robot from the 1st competition

We used the stone autonomous that we worked on.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

The stone and foundation autonomous. We scored high points with our team.

WHAT WENT WRONG

It was hard to quickly move around the field. And we were in the way of our teammates and the knocked into use because we couldn’t go fast enough.

WHAT WE CHANGED

We changed the motor gears so we could go faster during the match. We had to change the autonomous because of the gear change.

3. League Competition

We ended up being 7th out of 14.

We used the same robot as last competition

What went wrong

The block autonomous did not work. The distance sensor failed and did not see the blocks. We got penalties for blocking the other players robot and during autonomous. We did not have a stone delivering strategy. We need to work on a new strategy for next competition.

What went right

We scored 71 points in a match which I our highest score so far. The foundation autonomous worked well after we fixed the sensor.

What we changed

We slightly modified the distances for the autonomous.