Kirsti+and+Hayley

Kirsti and Hayley

Bot description:
In the bot ball game we knew that our robot should be stable and impossible to tip. With this in mind, we attached two side motors which came from the Constructopedia v2.1 Document. This was one of the best solutions to the balance issue. We also knew that we had to catch the ball and throw it into a goal. From a previous challenge we had to design a similar mechanism that had to move a block. Thinking back to this assignment, we both agreed on having a drop motor come out of the front of the robot. The motor was attached on its side and was controlled by buttons on our joystick. The hardest part was coming up with a functional back wheel. We thought a large back wheel would be the best solution but this didn’t turn out to be the case. After much trial and error we decided to have two small back wheels. These wheels helped us complete smooth turns and also could move up the ramp. Our idea of a swivel wheel came from the REM bot building instructions. Our final robot has two small back wheels, two side motors, and a drop motor coming out of the front.

Design & Building Process:
By far the biggest issue was the back wheel. Originally we thought a large back swivel wheel would work very well for the robot to get up the mat. After testing this idea we discovered that a large back swivel didn't work because it dragged on the ground due to the position of the motors. Then we decided on having a large back wheel that remained stationary but we ran into turning issues. After exhausting a lot of ideas I decided to look back at the REM bot building instructions where we had to build a small swivel wheel for our cars. Using these instructions we constructed two small swivel wheels. Kirsti then came up with a design to add the two small swivel wheels to the back. Overall, we are very happy with how our back wheel design turned out. The picture below displays the final result.



Another issue was designing our drop motor. We weren't sure if adding a motor to one side would create issues with balance but it turned out fine. We also had to make sure that our drop motor would not interfere with the front wheels. In order to do this we made the dropper short and narrow. The drop motor is also controlled by our joystick controller. There are 3 buttons used to control thos motor. The reason why three buttons were necessary is because it was the most reliant and easiest way to move the motor up and down. One button puts the motor up, the other puts it down, and the other stops it from moving. The picture below display the final result.



In-Game performance:
Our robot overall was very efficient during the game. I was easily able to steer it and didn't have any difficulties with getting up on the mat. There was a slight problem at the end which was that one of our back wheels came off. The game ended at this point so it didn't effect our overall game performance. In general, I didn't see anything that we needed to modify during the game. Everything worked out according to how we planned it. This project for Kirsti and I was very successful and we were both happy with the final outcome.