PHS Mary G. Ross Engineering Lab
800 Magnolia Ave
Piedmont, CA 94611
In INFINITE RECHARGE, two alliances work to protect FIRST City from approaching asteroids caused by a distant space skirmish. Each Alliance, along with their trusty droids, race to collect and score Power Cells in order to energize their Shield Generator for maximum protection. To activate stages of the Shield Generator, droids manipulate their Control Panels after scoring a specific number of Power Cells. Near the end of the match, droids race to their Rendezvous Point to get their Shield Generator operational in order to protect the city! Highlander Robotics wishes all teams a great 2021 season!
Our design goal with Whirlpool was to fire Power Cells as rapidly as possible into the Upper Power Port. The shooter’s 2 lb brass flywheel stores great rotational kinetic energy in the rotating system, lowering the shooter recovery time between each shot. We reach a consistent RPM in less than 1/10 of a second after firing every power cell. A curved rack and pinion attached to the hood control the exit angle of our shots. We rotate the hood to the ideal hood angle for any given shot distance, accurately and absolutely indicating its angle with a potentiometer. With reliable wheel RPM control and hood angle control, Whirlpool can point and rapidly shoot its power cells into the Upper Power Port.
Climber creation was special as it was started in the 2020 season but we decided to create an entirely different mechanism for the 2021 season. Last year, we designed and prototyped a telescoping pole, but this year we made a huge pivot to using a cable track as the method of extending our hook, a daunting decision as we were unsure if the design would prove fruitful. With a socially distanced build season, we are extremely proud of our members for stepping up. Whether it’s designing with a CAD program they had minimal experience with or their patience as we worked through weeks of significant design changes, it all came together to create a unique climber that we haven’t seen in the game before.
The routing mechanism is what moves balls from the intake to the shooter. When designing this, we wanted to be able to hold 5 balls in the center of the robot that could be accessed at any time, and a circle let us do that. We have the balls fall into the spinning circle once they go through the intake, and when we want to remove them a piston pushes a set of compliant wheels into the circle and the balls spin into them and up into the shooter. We can load 5 balls in less than 3 seconds into the shooter so we do not waste time shooting.
