How our Robot Looked - Before and After By: ASTHA PATEL

“Smitty's" design evolution

What we learned by building our arm, sweeper and “crate” 

         When we first started building our robot, we followed the instructions that were provided online to build the robot.  When we started using the robot we were finding some problems with the arm and sweeper.  So the way we solved this problem was we discussed as a team how to figure out what was the best way to solve this solution.  

         The kind of problems we had was that when we were using the sweeper we had zip ties on the sweeper so it was really hard to get the minerals in the arm.  So the way we solved this problem was that we tested different materials to act as our “sweeper” until we found the perfect match.

         Another problem we had while using the robot is that we could carry at the most 2 blocks outside of the crater.  But on our robot arm, we could only carry 1 block so the problem was that the rules said we could carry 2 blocks but the arm and “crate” we had from standard robot design instruction could only let us carry 1 block.  So as a team, we decided we should use up all the room we could that we had in the middle of our chassis and expand our “crate”. So we started with a cardboard model.  

        Then when we started using this method and adding things to our cardboard model including adding a “snow plow” type front extension too.  That helped get the minerals in a little better, but also caused problems as it swung up and down and got stuck when the robot moved.   

       We kept configuring different cardboard designs till we got the exact style we needed.  We figured out what was really working for us.  That was when we got some help from the parents to build one out of metal to replicate the features of our cardboard model.  The reason we went with metal is that the cardboard would break and we wanted to keep our original final model so we can show the judges at the real match on how we designed, tested and built the arm.