47874J Occam's Chainsaw | Pits & Parts | V5RC Push Back Robot

本站添加: 2026-05-08

[00:00:05]Hi everybody, it's Tyler here at Vex Worlds here checking in with 47874J.

[00:00:09]It's Arkham's Chainsaw coming out of uh Washington this team. Won the Excellence Award at night. Congratulations and qualifying for Vex Worlds that way. This robot super cool though. 16 block capacity, two wide on there as well, too. A lot of great things you can watch on this robot. Great scoring capabilities with this. Just watching them uh their last match, too. They had a phenomenal match with that. We'll dive in a bit more into their PID, some of their strategy that they're going into, and we can't wait to learn more about this team coming up here on Bits and Parts.

[00:00:35]All right, and lots of great things to break down on this robot here. So, uh you're running a 16 block capacity that's two wide on there. Just talk to me more about this overall uh strategy and design of this robot.

[00:00:44]>> Yeah, so we're a two wide S bot. And kind of how we were able to capture this this season was um that we had a lot of different ideas on how to complete that. We started with a one wide S bot. We saw that a lot of teams um had that, and it was really uh efficient. But, we found that we wanted more blocks for skills. So, we ended up going to a two wide. How we were able to accomplish that was that um we had we have this cage that has spacers and zip ties with rubber bands holding it. We found that this would help uh the blocks tumble in the intake, which would allow the friction to go down so that we could hold more blocks um and be able to accomplish that 16 to 18 ball capacity.

[00:01:26]Before we get to our next segment, we'd like to thank the following.

[00:01:30]The Robotics Education and Competition Foundation provides fantastic programs for students from elementary school all the way through college. These include Vex, Aerial Drone Competition, Online Challenges, JROTC, Girl Powered, scholarships, certifications, and so much more. To discover these exciting opportunities, visit recf.org and get connected.

[00:01:51]Kind of another part with this is how we were able to score the low goal because we were two wide. We had a early season We had a problem with that the blocks would just come out in different directions. So, how we were able to accomplish that was we [music] have a uh lever that will allow us to go back to one wide that will flip out >> [music] >> um when we're in skills or in match play letting uh letting our driver be able to score back on the low goal.

[00:02:16]When was this iteration of robot last uh created or what what was this kind of main archetype made? This is the V4 robot. Um this robot uh we just we made for our state level competition, but we've been making our double S's all season long.

[00:02:31]And when you look at some of the other competitors on the field, are you uh confident in that that double S wide? Do you think that's a great great choice for your team to go with? Definitely. It It just allows us to have so many different match strategies and um not worry about having to find blocks on the field at all.

[00:02:45]Well, super fast, that's a great transition. You talked about match strategy on there. Uh your team I just watched last match, very dominant on the field. Great low goal scoring, and you had that great last second uh score in the long goal to win that match as well, too. Break down how your match strategy works with that 16 block. Yeah, so since we have a 16 block capacity, that gives me a lot of options. I can fill up the since we have 12 match loads, I can get those uh in either at the start of the match or later in the match. Usually, if I get it at the start of the match, I will be uh using those to out cycle my opponents. And with that, I'm able to uh get all the long goals and the middle goals in one cycle if I want to. And so, another strategy we have with this double bot uh shape bot is >> [music] >> that we at the end we can match load all blocks and dump them all into the goal, and that's a fifth uh 55-point swing. Yeah. Can we take a look at what that swing might look like? Let's bring some in and put them back out.

[00:03:49]Uh yeah, a cool thing Yeah, so uh basically, that gives me a lot of options in matches, and yeah.

[00:04:08]So, couple things just asking this. Um looking uh from match strategy standpoint, do you find that you are stronger against a certain type of other robot out there or maybe one that fares a little bit better against you based on this design? Uh this robot is very compatible with the uh as you've seen, there's a lot of teams that are running like a sunroof mechanism that goes over the goal. So, this robot can just dump in the goal, and you can have your partner just cover that part and while you're going around filling the other goals and stuff.

[00:04:37]Where does the uh juicy come into play in terms of match strategy for your [laughter] team? The juicy is a word play. Shout out to uh 1023E. They had uh the word uh fat, and so we just went with juicy on ours. It was fun.

[00:04:52]From the Bruno Mars song. Gotcha. Last thing I want to ask you from a match strategy standpoint, as you we're filming this at kind of the end of uh day two uh here at Vex Worlds. Um so, as you look towards your uh last set of qualification matches coming up, has that strategy changed for you at all uh in terms of matches? Definitely. We've been uh deciding whether we want to score early on in the game or later, and we found out the best way to uh is just to score later bec- and just dump them last second, so there's a less chance of you getting des scored.

[00:05:21]And so, Hal, let's pass over to you and uh wrap up talking about some of your programming on that. You mentioned before you're doing some uh different PID tuning, adjusting your gains a little bit more. Can you just talk to me about how you've gone through that?

[00:05:30]Yeah. So, the main thing that is kind of special about our code is our use of gain scheduling. Um so, usually the the KD term of the um the PID uh controller usually scales linearly with the speed of the robot in order to brake the robot as it approaches a target position.

[00:05:47]However, the kinetic energy of the robot scales uh quadratically because uh kinetic energy is equal to 1/2 mass uh velocity squared. So, this causes the robot to often um undershoot uh target if it's kind of smaller than the tuned uh tar- uh value, and overshoot a target if it's uh over the size of the tuned value.

[00:06:08]So, the way we get around that is by a adjusting our KD uh value of the um of the PID on a quadratic uh sorry, a square root function so that as the turn becomes larger, we have a larger KD value, which allows for um our robot to kind of brake quicker as we get or brake more as we get to the target or less if it's a smaller target.

[00:06:30]Your team has been one of the best in uh skills throughout this season as well, too. What do you think has really attributed to that success? Yeah, I'd say it's partially that PID um tuning and just making sure our robot is super accurate. But, it's also it's also a lot of kind of baking um it's a lot of baking uh tolerances into the bot. Like a lot of most sections of our bot have like two one to two inches of tolerance. Like even if the robot hits uh like a match loader or a park zone or a uh the goal a little bit off, it can always align, which means our our code can be very quick and efficient without needing to worry too much about whether um whether we're going to hit the target or not.

[00:07:09]Arkham's Chainsaw, thank you so much for taking time to tell us more about your machine. We wish you best of luck here at Vex Worlds, but a lot of great stuff for teams to learn from it. So, we can't wait to see how you do here. Good luck the rest of the way. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

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[00:07:26]The Robotics Education and Competition Foundation provides fantastic programs for students from elementary school all the way through college. These include Vex, Aerial Drone Competition, Online Challenges, JROTC, Girl Powered, scholarships, certifications, and so much more. To discover these exciting opportunities, visit