Butters the Robot

Designed to be simple, yet elegant.
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Specializes in picking up multiple glyphs at once, regardless of their orientation. 
Relic subassembly places the relic standing in the 3rd zone. 
Autonomous program can start on any balancing stone, scores the jewel, reads the cipher, places a glyph in the correct column, and parks in the safe zone. 

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Robot Reveal Movie

Brainstorming

Custom Drivetrain

We designed a custom drive train for the robot.  It allows us to use chain drive mecanum wheels, with the wheels mounted through the middle to reduce the center of gravity. 

We worked with our sponsor, AEI, to dip it in chromate to give it a golden color, like a relic!

This is our finished belly plate for our drive train.  Notice the angled rim around the edge to allow the robot to climb the balancing stones.

Next we attached our mecanum wheels and motors.

Side view of our chain drive mecanum wheels.

Ready for wire management!

Glyph Lift

We decided to use a linear slide lift for the glyph sub assembly.  

Attaching the linear slide to the frame.

Testing different materials for the grabbers. 

Our final design has four independent paddles that are all servo controlled. We put non-slip stair tread on the paddles to increase their friction coefficient and give us more grip on the glyphs.

Relic Subassembly

We decided to design a horizontal linear slide to place the relic in the third zone.  We prototyped several design ideas for picking up and carrying the relic.  This one uses servos to apply tension on surgical tubing to grab the relic from the sides.  

We also prototyped a claw design idea using textrix channel and servos to grab and carry the relic.    The claw prototype worked better, especially for picking up the relic in the tight corner spaces.  

Then we worked to improve the claw by designing and 3D printing  custom parts.    We started by searching existing CAD designs for the relic claw.  We found this one from another FTC team, Artemus Maximus,  posted on Thingiverse.  We printed it and tested it before we started designing our own.   It worked well for picking up and placing the relic.  We wanted to be able to flip the relic upside down on top of our robot and carry it as we drove fairly aggressively across the field.  So, we decided to modify it to more securely hold the relic.

Once we were happy with our design, we replaced all of our prototypes with black 80/20 and customized black 3D printed parts.