Final Summary

Autobot:





Decepticon:

Our final machines are shown above. Autobot, which is the offensive bot of the two, was what consumed the majority of our time. The frame consisted of an interior layer of 1/8^th inch aluminum and the outer layer was ¼” acrylic. This provided us with a sturdy, yet lightweight machine. Initially, we had planned for our bot to travel up the wave field in the back and get all of the balls off of the hill. Later on in the project, we determined that it would be more advantageous and less risky to alter our strategy and go for the front balls, and then either our opponents front balls or the balls at the base of the tower. This decision came from our bot being quicker than our calculations predicted as well as the seeding round being unopposed with all of the front balls open and low scores being posted in test runs by all of the teams. Embracing the team name we were assigned, Autobot has a drawing of a luchador rabbit etched into the side plates. Decepticon also has space invader on its body plate.

Our timing circuit was difficult, but eventually got made. We didn’t use the circuit for the competition because we feared that it may be triggered unintended current through the motors before the match started. After we placed 4^th in the competition we tried the circuit out and it worked exactly as planned and lasted about 80 seconds before shutting of the power and stopping the motion of the roller.

Our pulley’s and belt turned out better than expected. The 3D printed pulleys worked wonderfully and the belt provided great grip and comfort knowing that we couldn’t be pushed around or fall into our own hole when depositing balls.

Decepticon didn’t turn out as well as Autobot did, and would have benefitted from allowing more testing time. Decepticon had trouble moving due to lack of grip and weight on the wheels and loss of power due to wire length. If we had known that we could add weight solely for the purpose of increasing traction we definitely would have done so. We had a few problems with the size of Decepticon and ended creating a larger body for it the day before the seeding round. Other than those two problems, the 3D printed pillow block bearings and concept of Decepticon turned out as planned.