Get A Kick Out Of It

Friday was incredibly busy with prototyping, testing, refining, and iterating.
Facebook Photo Album

We've worked really hard on our gripper mechanism. Different shapes have been thought up and tested. The piston that closes around the ball has been changed. Our next idea are some arms that look sort of like forklifts but sideways... Just watch the video. Haha. This will allow our kicker to kick the ball out of the grippers.


The Chairman's Team had an interesting day today. The internet went out so they had to edit the Chairman's Essay on their phones instead. They worked through it and it was definitely memorable.

Speaking of the kicker. It has undergone some incredible transformations since our last update. We kept iterating and testing the kicker (or as we have lovingly started calling it, "The Boot"). We started with a 33" boot but then cut it down to about 24". Then we put more supports on the tower. Our next step was to cut the whole assembly down so it will match up with the robot base.



We love the new AndyMark14U chassis. It makes it so much easier to mount systems to it securely. Also, it's super fast.

The most exciting part of the past couple days was actually having the boot mounted on our robot last night and kicking goals. It was so awesome.

Obviously, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We need to mount the motors that will bring the boot back and launch it. We're thinking a shifting gear box with a neutral gear. We also need to finish the gripper prototype and mount them.

Lots more work to do!!