McKenzie Kil-A-Bytes
Awards
Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award
This year's robot has some awesome technological advances that will hopefully make this an exciting year. Most of the changes occured in our control system and on the body of the robot. We have 2 grippers on arms that are used to pick up balls. There are triggers on the grippers that let us know if the ball is centered. It can be adjusted, and it is crucial that we get it positioned correctly before our automatic shooting system goes into action. Our shooting system is very unique. It can tell when to switch into "Shooting Mode" from sensors on the robot and will automatically shoot the ball over the overpass when it is close enough. It will then drive forward and pick up the ball and continue along the track. Our driving system is also very cool, it uses 4 Ultrasonic sensors during hybrid mode to follow an automated path. There are encoders on the wheels that tell us how fast our robot is going. We've also added a Cruise Control to our robot that lets us keep a constant speed going. Another interesting thing we have added this year are sensors that will make our robot slow down when we are approaching a nearby object, and stop before we make contact. This will reduce accidents and ensure we are safe on the playing field.
Once again, we will be using the program known as RALFF. Robot Autonomous Language For FIRST (RALFF) allows us to have multiple autonomous mode settings. We began using this amazing program in 2006, and haven't looked back. It can be used in almost any FIRST event, because multiple autonomous settings are usually needed. This gives us lots of flexibility in what we do depending on each situation the match throws at us. RALFF, known to the team as our 12th man, has given us a unique capability to do multiple things during our autonomous period.
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