It is Official.

Our final assembly.

Today we were able to finish the final assembly of our robot. After weeks of manufacturing and fabrication, our hard work finally payed off as we hooked it up to a stationary power supply and it came to life. There have been a few obstacles along the way, but our perseverance has payed off as everything has come together. All that remains now are the final tweaks required for mounting the control box. Then we wait for the final competition were we will see how we stack up against the rest of the competition.

Without further ado, here is the first video of our robot in action.  

The Harvester is Complete!

Earlier this week we were finally able to fully assemble our most critical module (the harvester). Over the past two weeks we have been manufacturing all of the parts necessary for this module, and on Tuesday afternoon all of our hard work payed off as we were able to assemble the harvester with relative ease. Thanks to the high tolerances we were able to achieve with the laser cutter, our press-fit parts were able to attach quite snugly and provide the solid structure that we need.
In addition to the completion of the harvester assembly, we received approval on the remainder of the engineering for our robot. With this clearance we are stepping manufacturing into high gear this week, finishing the remainder of the frame rails, and water-jetting the final parts of our robot on Thursday.

The final Harvester assembly, ready to be attached to the frame of our robot.

  

Manufacturing Week 2

This week we finished turning the axles, and laser cut the supports for the harvester. We also finished laser cutting the supports that hold the paddles onto the axle. We used the bandsaw and drill press to work on the motor box. It is almost complete and is only missing two holes. The axles were 1/4" aluminium rods, the supports were made out of acrylic, and the motor box was made out of 1"x2" aluminum. We also water jet cut the supports for our tracks, which came out well besides a couple of malfunctions by the water jet where it did not fully cut holes.

Since the paddles are already made, our MCM, the harvester, is almost complete. This week we are drilling holes in the gears for set screws and finishing production on our MCM. We will be putting all the pieces together for the harvester this week and making sure everything fits just right, and making adjustments for anything that does not. This will be done before MS8 on wednesday.

Next week we intend to build the frame out of the 12"x24" aluminum plate and the 1"x2" aluminum. We will also finish holes on the supports for the tracks where the holes were not fully cut. We also intend to start work on the trap door portion of the frame so we can release the balls.

Manufacturing Begins

This week, we, the Ghost Robots, began building our robot. We are starting with our most critical module, the harvester unit. This unit is composed of four different components that may need to be manufactured multiple times. Of these four components we have completed the delrin paddles and began turning the two 1/4in aluminum axles. We used the laser cutter to cut the delrin paddles. It took forever to etch the text into the paddles, but it was worth it, they turned out very well.

Cutting two paddles

took about 36 minutes.

The paddles are etched

with "GHOST ROBOTS"and

are used to sweep ping pong

balls into the machine

Next week, we intend to finish turning the axles, and use the laser cutter to cut the supports for the harvester and the supports to hold the paddles onto the axle. Each will be made from acrylic so once everything is set up it shouldn't take long to finish.

Team Schedule

This is our project schedule for the remainder of the semester. It will be kept up to date with any changes that we make, as well as checked off as tasks are completed.
 

Strategy and Overview

Our combine style robot on the arena.

Our strategy is to play the table-top, gathering all the balls and depositing them into our funnel. We are planning on completely disregarding the balls in the slot due to the large weight advantage of the balls on the table top.

Our concept is to build a combine style vehicle that will 'harvest' the balls on the table top into a central hopper, the vehicle can then drive over our funnel to deposit the balls. The main components of the bot consist of the harvester wheel on the front to collect the balls, the frame/hopper that will hold all of the balls as we drive around the table, and finally the tracked drivetrain that will give us the ability to drive over the slot as well as small defenses put in place by our opponents.

An overview of our combine bot.