2017 FRC Robot
A competitive robot designed for low cycle times
In my grade 10 years, I took on the role of design lead on my FRC team, during the Steamworks season. The game was designed around Wiffle balls (fuel) which had to be scored in a low and high goal, and large plastic gears that had to be placed on a spring. The strategic approach we took was to cycle as many gears as possible, and as a secondary function, we would assist our team mates in scoring fuel balls. Our robot, named The Beast, used rubberized conveyor rollers, and a sliding pocket to hold gears.
I worked on 2 sub-assemblies throughout the design and build phases, the fuel intake and the gear pocket. Since the gear pocket was the main system our strategy relied on we continuously iterated and improved it throughout the season, making a total of 5 design overhauls.
The gear mechanism eventually got fast enough to allow our robot to do 10-11 cycles a game, something that few teams achieved in the competition. Despite this advantage we had over other teams, one strategic point we oversaw was the low fuel scoring vs. the high fuel scoring, which was worth 3x as many points per ball. Because of this, after the season finished I made it a side project to design a turret shooter (pictured below) for this game, and we prototyped it after to learn things for future years (something that came in handy in 2020).
