FIRST Robotics 2014 (Aerial Assist) - Concept

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

The most fun, yet most difficult part of this was trying to get the pneumatic tubing to move within the animation.
I used a trick where I have 2 hidden arms attached at their tips to where the pneumatics connect to, and then I have the tubing Swept through a spline I have drawn through the endpoints of the hidden arms.

Full details on how to create tubing/wiring/cables that move with your model can be found in this extremely helpful video by Mattius R: http://youtu.be/04DqoXJOP8E

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File Details:
The assembly file was saved out as a part file consisting of bodies (where possible) and surfaces.

The model isn't fully complete (it's missing a lot of fasteners and electrical wiring), nor is it perfect, but since I might not be touching it again, I thought it deserved to be shared, and hopefully it'll inspire others who enjoy robotics!
The mechanism for launching the ball never ended up working the way I wanted it to in SolidWorks, and I didn't add the chain system on the back to raise the blocking arm, but most of all the other components are present.

I attached a .gif image that has just a bunch of different screenshots I took. They don't show how the robot is supposed to move, they were meant just to show how some of the different parts moves independantly, but I thought it would be better to package them together into a single image, rather than having a bunch of different random screenshots.

***Update***:
I decided to go ahead and share the actual assembly and the parts. I removed the all of the electronics, the wheels and motors, the bumpers, and a few other various parts to try and reduce the file size and to make opening the file easier on SolidWorks.
In the "Model" tab, if you move things around, in order for the pneumatic tubing to update its position, you will need to hit Rebuild.
If you click the "Animation" tab and it asks you if you want to update the positions, just make sure you say "No" and it should still work. You might need to recalculate the animation, but that should be enough to get it to work.

I hope you all enjoy the model, if you have any issues with it, just ask, and I might be able to answer your request!

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Background Story:
I've been mentoring my old high school team for 7 years now (it was 6 years back when I modeled this).
Every year, I do what I can to try to inspire the young minds to come up with some awesome input during the design phase of the build season.

If you can't make a semi-functional prototype out of plywood, duct tape, and pvc in order to show someone how something is going to move and interract with the rest of the robot, then you might need to go back to the drawing board.

In 2014, I took the designs they came up with, and I modeled them to try and ensure that everything would rotate freely without interfering with another moving part on the robot. In short, we didn't give ourselves much clearance, but we were successful using a similar design.

While the actual robot ended up looking quite a bit different from this concept, I ended up having loads of fun modeling it.
The most notable difference between this and the actual robot is the ball-launching mechanism. We went through a lot of different versions, trying to get it to work.
Some of the screenshots I will add will show another version of the launcher the team had thought of as well.

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