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just wait till u see v2...

@@GarfieldRobotics when will v2 be released? my robotics team is considering using ball drive for this upcoming competition, should we wait for v2?

@@coarel2788 it's been on the back burner as leadership transitions and other projects take the fore, but CAD is mostly finished. V2 is meant to be super accessible to other teams, with no advanced manufacturing, just 3D printing and COTS for the most part. highly optimized for low weight - currently mass is around 6 lbs, including electronics. Feel free to reach out to contact@garfieldrobotics.com if you have questions about V1 or V2 (once that's done)

mayhaps drive.google.com/file/d/1gUAn-lryf8tGlwjc3T69Bk72x7bTbm8P/view?usp=sharing

thanks!

Hey! Good question. We talk a bit about this on our website garfieldrobotics.com/robots/ball-drive/: Ball drive combines simplicity and reliability with the maneuverability of mecanum or X-drive and the pushing power and traction of a tank or swerve drive. It also has the unique ability to have two different drive ratios with equal traction on each axis so one drive train can be both powerful and fast without using a transmission. Simpler and more reliable than swerve drive or tank with a two-speed transmission More maneuverable than tank drive Faster than an X-drive More traction, pushing power, and terrain climbing ability than any roller-based holonomic drive system (eg: Mecanum, H-drive)

We used it last year and the year before since it was already built and allowed us to focus on other design decisions (check out last years reveal to see it in action!). It probably contributed to our winning the Innovate award at state last year in addition to our suction intake. This year we are using a classic mecanum drive base since we don't need traction or pushing power, and there isn't any terrain.

@@GarfieldRobotics makes sense, thanks!

@@GarfieldRobotics thanks, i will check out the cad files!

@@manavshah6831 No problem!

very quality

We actually created our own balls. Each ball has a Styrofoam core with molded rubber around it made by one of our past members.

Yeah, I had heard of other teams using syringe based mechanisms, do you guys need to contact the stone before you begin to draw back the syringe? How fast was the picking up of stones?

@@jadenfann2904 The way we had the syringe hooked it functioned in place of the diaphragm of a diaphragm pump, it was a constantly reciprocating piston with a pair of check valves to keep the air moving in (one valve would let the air only out, attached to the output, and the other would let the air only in, next to the suction cup). That meant that it worked pretty much as well as it did for 4042 when we had a straight perpendicular contact to the stone. Unfortunately we attached it to a 4 DOF arm, and the motor that we had for the "wrist" was rarely perfectly perpendicular to the ground, so it didn't always work in matches. It wasn't really a problem with the suction, though, it was a problem with the arm we attached it to.

We used a diaphragm pump to create a partial vacuum through tubing and suck the stones with a suction cup. We would run the pump, and as soon as the pump hit the stone it would be quite secure. We would turn off the pump to release the stone.

It essentially has an off-center cam on the shaft, which moves back and forth following a sinusoidal function. This is connected to a rubber flap in a hollow section, which flexes as the shaft rotates and the cam moves. (The diaphragm) in the same enclosure are 2 one-way valves, one leading in, the other out, which force air through in a cyclical pattern. By connecting the intake to a hose with a suction cup, the pump causes the intake to attach to stones, or any flat surface really.

It can even pick up non-game objects, such as phones and glass beakers, but we had a mishap in which we accidentally turned off the vacuum while holding a beaker we had on loan for dying mecanum wheels from a science teacher in front of him, thus yeeting it into the ground and converting it to glass shards.

and is that legal ? could you argue it's not a pneumatic system ?

​@@mihailazar2487 it was illegal to have any pressure over 1 atm, which we never went over (it just continually sucked the stones). However I believe they changed it after our robots so that even our system is outlawed.

yep they sure did, the robot last year barely existed. This year we are getting back on our feet with a real working robot :P

I was the lead designer on this and I graduated before it was even finished, and the machine is near impossible to service due to some... interesting design decisions I made

We don't use clamping hubs, when we built this robot the primary system we used for keying sprockets in place was a special hand-made key system. We got them from Surplus Center though, they are remarkably inexpensive.

We lost many members and took way too long brainstorming and designing and not enough building. Ended up with a drive base and lift and no intake :(

+AshKohn47 I actually designed it just before we went to worlds last year with the idea of it being the perfect holonomic for a far-box robot for dealing with those :D Former Mechanical captain, 4042

The drive was actually quite smooth considering the ~70 pound weight of the robot, the only issues we had were to do with the sprockets and bearings delivering power to the rear wheels.

We don't think the additional space it uses should be an issue, especially with this year's game, although we are still considering whether we will use it this year or not. A swerve drive will often outperform ball drive in many ways, especially in FRC, but in terms of simplicity and reliability a FTC swerve is much more complex and prone to issues.

we did last year as well as this year :D

@@jadenfann2904 Do you have any footage of it? I would like to see how it actually performs in a match

Kaden Maticic we will hopefully be releasing a reveal video soon and I don’t want to spoil it! We wanted to do one during the season but it got too busy. We will see how it goes, if it doesn’t get done we will release the raw footage

@@jadenfann2904 cant wait to see

@@kjmaticic Reveal video coming out soon, be on the lookout