Robot Arm C

[Bazinga+]

I have just finished editing a short video of our 2017 Robot Arm running through its program. The arm basically moves in the x,y plane only with a hand that can "pinch" the stacks of pennies, flip them, and eject them one at a time. This design finished 2nd at the Wright State Invitational but has been refined for higher scores. The YouTube link for the video is https://youtu.be/6R6HGl7f7Ow .

Looks familiar

Have you seen this one yet? When I saw it at the competition I thought it looked pretty similar to the one you posted here a few months ago.

Yeah it seems a lot of teams use a similar end effector to that of my first arm. Not sure if they came up with it independently or based it off that arm.

[Sabre]

The New York State competition had targets with plexiglass on top of them. Does anyone know if this will be similar at nationals? The smooth nature of it really helped my design for spreading the pennies.

[windu34]

The New York State competition had targets with plexiglass on top of them. Does anyone know if this will be similar at nationals? The smooth nature of it really helped my design for spreading the pennies.

Highly doubt nationals will be run that way because it makes it harder to identifiy which pennies are in vs out and that will be a major problem at nationals with teams getting very near perfect scores and depending on fractions of a millimeter to separate 1st through 6th

[bernard]

The New York State competition had targets with plexiglass on top of them. Does anyone know if this will be similar at nationals? The smooth nature of it really helped my design for spreading the pennies.

Although a clear plastic layer over the Competition Area would prevent damage to targets, I would not use them when supervising because they introduce parallax error. I expect many teams at nationals will attempt tight configurations of pennies, with many on or nearing borders of rings, and parallax complicates counting pennies as in or out.

[Alke]

I am new to Robotics and my team just assigned me to Robot Arm! I am planning on using an OWI kit from last year and modifying the end-effector. Obviously, I will not be competitive at States but I want to learn as much as possible. Any resources I should use or books I should read? Thank you

[Alke]

For context, My school has different teams and I was on the lower team because of my inexperience with SciOly. After regional, they decided to put me on the States team which resulted in the reassignment of my events. I have 2 weeks to States with my new events and I cannot wait!!

[Raleway]

For context, My school has different teams and I was on the lower team because of my inexperience with SciOly. After regional, they decided to put me on the States team which resulted in the reassignment of my events. I have 2 weeks to States with my new events and I cannot wait!!

Great that you love to learn! If you want the full, full experience, build it yourself. With the advent of 3D printing and laser cutters becoming available to many high schools and even students, learning how to CAD your idea into reality is a great experience and skill to have. There are many different types of robots you can build. Most kits are master-slave in which you (the master) directly control the robot (slave) either by a controller. The other type is the "hardcoded" type. In this type, the robot is precoded to do a certain set of commands to achieve the goal (of flipping pennies into the zone). The benefit of the former allows for your control to affect how the robot does and allows for a margin of error. However, the performance of the robot is reliant on the controller and is hard to achieve "perfect score". Many top scoring teams that I have seen use a hardcoded device due to its ability to get a perfect score. Many teams either 3D print or laser cut a stencil for the perfect score. They use two arms- one to pick up pennies, and one to hold the stencil correctly. To fit in the starting box, the arms are in straight up position at rest. The one hand/arm/claw picks up the stacks of pennies and keeps them in stacks, then flips it to tails, and drops it in a cylinder. Then, the cylinder moves to dispense the flipped pennies in the dispenser. If it is too late for that, then just use a kit. But the self-built robot arm will much better let you learn about servos, motors, coding, and design much better. Good luck at states!

[windu34]

I am new to Robotics and my team just assigned me to Robot Arm! I am planning on using an OWI kit from last year and modifying the end-effector. Obviously, I will not be competitive at States but I want to learn as much as possible. Any resources I should use or books I should read? Thank you

The best thing you can do is watch youtube videos and look at images kf other scioly robot arms online. This will give you both a good understanding of the best way to score as many points as you can as well as learning which designs work best. The OWI doesnt have a closed loop feedback so master slave is the way you will go. Practice a lot!

[Alke]

Thank you, windu34 and Raleway! I appreciate it.

[tltang]

Can someone please help me clarify this rule?

For Robot Arm, Rule 7.a, it says, “Any penny under or over another penny or not visible to the ES must not receive any points.”

My understanding is that any pennies that overlap, whether it is partially or fully, don't count. We have gone through a few invitationals and one regional so far. Sometimes they remove the overlapped ones on top, sometimes they don't remove them at all.

Which way is the correct way?

Thanks,

Lisa