Preliminary Design Review

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Preliminary Design Review
WPI / Mass Academy FIRST Team 190 Gompei and
the HERD
Presented By Ken Stafford, Team Advisor Colleen
Shaver, Director of Support Chris Werner,
Director of Operations
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What is FIRST?

• Organization designed to inspire students in
  math, science, and engineering
• Brings engineers and students together to work on
  a common problem
• Introduces students to real world engineering
  challenges
• Over 1000 teams around the world

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Our Team

• One of only 6 teams involved continuously since
  the program began in 1992
• 2005 Recipient of the WPI University Ambassador
  Award for our community outreach, including over
  40 demos per year
• Called the highlight of their WPI engineering
  education by past alums
• WPIs 1 women and minority
• outreach program

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Operations

• 2006 Game Introduction
• Brainstorming
• Mechanical
• Controls

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The Game
Game Animation
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Brainstorming

• Discussed strategies as a team
• Established an ordered list for gameplay
• Score balls
• Collect/Contain Balls
• Score on platform
• Defense-specific
• Push Balls

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Brainstorming

• Met in three groups to develop initial robot
  designs
• After three days, groups convened to present
  ideas
• 2 groups designed conveyor systems to a single
  shooter with an omni-wheel drive
• 1 group designed a track system with revolver
  using a standard drive system

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Final Design

• Six-wheel drive with two speeds
• Ability to get balls from the floor and human
  player
• Controlled delivery to shooter
• Ability to shoot balls into center goal
  on-the-fly from our side of the field
• Many offensive and defensive autonomous options

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Mechanical Driveline/Chassis

• Driven by 4 CIM Motors through a two stage
  reduction
• Six 5 rubber caster wheels
• Provides both traction and shortened wheel base
• Speeds up to 14 ft/s
• Ludicrous Speed Drive
• Four 3 rubber caster wheels
• Powered from main wheels
• Pneumatically raised and lowered
• Provide velocities up to 16 ft/s

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Mechanical Ball Collection

• Series of 2 PVC rollers with rubber
• Spins at 3000 rpm
• Powered by mini-bike motor
• Balls lifted into storage area (hopper or
  directly into single-file tracks)

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Mechanical Ball Sorting/Storage

• Balls jam themselves very easily
• Hopper design is the most advantageous
• Quick loading, high capacity
• Most difficult to extract single balls from
• Sorting balls into single-file as they are
  received is most efficient
• Decreases capacity
• Delays floor-to-air time

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Mechanical Ball Launching

• Ball pitcher on turret to allow for 360 degree
  shooting
• Launch balls in parabolic trajectory from the top
  of the robot
• Ability to score from 6 to 21 feet using same
  release angle

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Mechanical Ball Launching

• Contain pitcher mechanism at bottom
• Pneumatic cylinder to lift ball into pitcher
• Two 4 rubber wheels in series
• Second roller geared faster than first roller
• Fixed deflector angle allows wide shooting range
  due to flat trajectory

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Controls

• Controls challenge
• Continuously keep the turret/pitcher aimed at the
  center goal even while the robot is moving
• Operate all the other robot mechanisms to ease
  the human operator workload
• Multiple autonomous strategies including scoring
  balls on the center target during initial 10 sec
  period
• Provide many operator automated operations
• Many controls functions have already been
  prototyped on VEX Robots

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Controls Navigation

• Distance Measurement
• CMU Camera
• Computes distance to target using color tracking
  and calculating based on y-axis
• Computes horizontal offset using x-axis position
• Wheel Encoders
• Provide velocity information for
  shoot-while-driving function
• Robot Orientation
• Compass
• Provides coarse heading information necessary for
  robot orientation

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Autonomous Requirements

• No additional programming complexities
• Everything prototyped except shooting while
  moving
• Based on our last years autonomous engine
• Very similar to driver-operated periods
• Vision camera tracks light and determines when to
  shoot
• Ability to select delays and different paths to
  drive for unpredictability and compatibility with
  alliance partners

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Controls Operator Interface

• Driver controls both driveline and ball collector
• Additional operator station to control ball
  launching
• Switch to indicate offensive/defensive periods
• Ability to fine tune the shooting vector
• Fully automated or fully manual shooting modes
• Robot sensor feedback to operator
• Indicator lights to show target acquisition
• Considering heads up display to indicate ball
  locations and accuracy of acquired target (audial
  tones)

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Timeline Milestones

• Jan. 7th Kickoff
• Jan. 11th Strategy decision
• Jan. 15th Overall configuration
• Jan. 27th Preliminary Design Review
• Jan. 30th Chassis built
• Feb. 5th Driver try-outs
• Feb. 7th Mechanical subsystems built
• Feb. 11th Systems integrated
• Feb. 17th Critical Design Review
• Feb. 18th UTC Scrimmage
• Feb. 21nd Ship robot

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Competition Schedule

• UTC Scrimmage (Suffield, CT)
• February 18th, 2006
• Granite State Regional (Manchester, NH)
• March 2nd 4th, 2006
• Florida Regional (Orlando, FL)
• March 10th 12th, 2006
• Championship Event (Atlanta, GA)
• April 27th 29th, 2006

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Questions?

• For more information visit our website at
  http//www.wpi.edu/first/
• Anyone is welcome to visit us in the HL005
  weekdays after 1600, Saturdays after 1000, and
  Sundays after 1200.