DEWBOT VI

DEWBOT VI is designed to meet the specific challenges of the 2010 FRC game, BREAKAWAY.

current design

Documentation

Breakaway documentation page - you can get individual sections here

DEWBOT VI Build

The build season lasts 45 days, starting with a cold January morning and ending up in the middle of an even colder February night. The chronicles of the DEWBOT VI Build season make interesting reading of how we all band together to perform an almost impossible task of designing, building and testing a robot in such a short time frame. Associated with each weeks build are pictures showing happy (and towards the end, tired) roboteers and mentors hard at work.

Design Details

The links below will take you to details about the robot components.

Pivot Assembly

Drive Train

DEWBOT VI utilizes a multi-mode, 4-wheel pivot drive-train. Each wheel is independently driven and steered. If we do this well (from both a mechanical and programming perspective), we should have an extraordinarily maneuverable robot and one well-suited to 2010's BREAKAWAY competition. Pivot Drive was selected for:

Its superior maneuverability. This should be especially valuable in aligning with soccer balls and with the goal.
Safety while crossing the bump. A 6wd robot would tilt over further during the climb and would also experience two tipping points. The second of these (coming off the flat top of the bump) will put the robot at a considerable tipping risk unless center of mass (CoM) is very low.

DEWBOT VI is able to safely cross the bump and also drive through the tunnel. For both of these actions, the robot will need to drive in its long (x) axis direction. Chassis orientation is important for us in BREAKAWAY.

Drive Train Team Page

Mechanical / Scoring

DEWBOT VI’s scoring strategy is focused on scoring soccer balls. Towards this, we should be able to:

Herd up to 3 soccer balls and push these into the goal if playing in the alliance zone
Herd balls with the robot side as well and also push into the goal using the side.
Kick the ball towards the goal. We expect to be able to reliably score from Mid-field and to at least be able to reliably move balls from the opposing zone to the alliance zone with a single kick over both bumps. Bonus if we can reliably score from the opposing zone.
Clear soccer balls from the tunnels

DEWBOT VI has not provisions to Elevate or Suspend.

Mechanical Team Page

Pneumatics

Autonomous Mode

Weight

Bumpers

Bumpers Page

Events

Second Bay at DEC: Downingtown Area Robotics expanded into a 2nd bay at DEC. The new bay will be used for FRC and VEX storage. The original (larger) bay will house our power tools and will remain a work area.

Pancake Breakfast - 6-December-2009: Downingtown Area Robotics All-you-can-eat Pancake Breakfast at Exton Applebee's was a great success. Both the 8 AM and 9AM seatings were almost full. We had great service from our robotic waitstaff (students not robots). Applebee's donated the full cost of the food. With the gift basket raffle we collected over $1000. Everyone had a great time and we look forward to doing it next year!