341 Miss Daisy | Behind the Bumpers | FRC REBUILT Robot

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:02][music] >> What's up, everybody? My name is Jeff Funk and I'm here at the 2026 First Mid-Atlantic District Championship event held at Lehigh University. We're going to be talking today with team 341 Miss Daisy. Amir, Eric, Patrick, and Evan are going to be demoing this incredible [music] robot, one of the quickest robots in the Mid-Atlantic region, and making viral headlines with their awesome awesome performance. Check it out all here on Behind the Bumpers.

[00:00:33]All right, Amir, why don't why don't you get us started? Yeah, so here we have our intake, right? So, you can see these outer plates are made out of SRPP, right? It's a lightweight and more durable than polycarb, so it's been able to withstand most of our impacts throughout the season.

[00:00:48]And then we have our rollers, right?

[00:00:49]They're all dead axle rollers, right?

[00:00:51]You can see these bottom ones are from made out of silicone with a 3/8 round tubing going the length of the intake. And we found that the silicone on these two little rollers are able to help grip the ball as its initial contact is made. And then as you move up, we see these larger diameter polycarb rollers, right? Without silicone, we found that the compression is enough to hold the balls. And Amir, can I ask real quick? You said you used SRPP on these side panels. Did you test any other materials or did you immediately go to that?

[00:01:23]>> Yeah, so we we have used just regular polycarb, right? In testing, right? To make sure that the dimensions are are were right. But then through our off-season projects, we found that SRPP was very viable solution and it held up really well through [music] throughout the competition. So, we just thought, you know, since we had an extra plate, you know, we put it on and it's been working great for us.

[00:01:43]Awesome. Awesome.

[00:01:44]And then back to these rollers, right?

[00:01:46]We have these little stub rollers, we call them. And then what we did is we just turned down a Thunderhex shaft, so we have the hex profile on the end, which keeps the spacing, and so we can save weight throughout the length of the shaft. [music] And then once we lift our intake up, you can see that all of our motors down here are placed in the belly pan to keep our center of gravity low and so that the motors, if they were up top, you know, on the plates, you know, they're more exposed and more prone to damage.

[00:02:16]Before we get to our next segment, we'd like to thank the following.

[00:02:20]FRCT's managed [music] store program is an easy and profitable way to fundraise for your team or off-season event.

[00:02:26]FRCT's will handle everything from production, packaging, bulk or drop shipping, payment collection, and accounting. Teams can set their own prices and FRCT's will take care of the rest. Fill out a quote request or get more information when you schedule [music] a callback at frcts.com.

[00:02:40]As you're getting ready for the competition season, think AndyMark as your one-stop shop for all your team needs. AndyMark's Launcher in a Box is a configurable solution that so many teams are finding success with for the rebuild season. Also available at andymark.com, the AMPD AndyMark Power Distribution Board that provides [music] 24 40 amp independently fused output channels for safe, reliable power distribution.

[00:02:59]That's andymark.com.

[00:03:02]Yeah, so from the intake, we then move on to our serializer with four rollers um that are powered by two Kraken X60s that are linked together using a a gearbox on the side of our robot here.

[00:03:17]Um Something that you might notice is that we didn't go with big hopper. Instead, we went with a zero hopper concept kind of utilizing the my alliance zone as my hopper um to create this very fast zipper merge [music] from four balls into one into our turreted shooter.

[00:03:36]Um and to achieve that, we have three vertical omni wheels.

[00:03:42]Uh the only the rearmost is powered since during testing we found out that we didn't need to power the front two.

[00:03:50]And that we were still able to achieve the same ball per second.

[00:03:54]So, from there, it then passes off into our shooter at the very top.

[00:03:59]Uh it has these 1-in sushi wheels that always maintain contact with the fuel as it transitions from our serializer [music] to our shooter.

[00:04:12]And with that, we make sure that we never lose compression with the ball.

[00:04:16]And it is then shot out with 4-in Fairlane wheels that both act as our flywheel and shooting wheel, so that we can also decrease that weight and complexity. And we have these stealth wheels at the back that decrease our rotational inertia, maximizing [music] our linear speed, and decreasing our loss of kinetic energy. Awesome.

[00:04:38]All right, [music] what's next? So, then we have lastly our climber. We were just able to put this on for DCMP. We just found the weight, right? We had to reduce our weight to get this climber on. And so, it's powered by an X44 and it's a telescoping climber, right? And so, how it works is as the as the string is pulled down, these plates clamp along with these algae for extra grip to clamp the L1 rung, and then we're just able to climb quickly and effectively.

[00:05:05]Have you guys used that in a match yet?

[00:05:07]Uh >> new, right?

[00:05:08]>> This is new. So, we've been, you know, doing some testing and, you know, we've been trying to. I don't think we've used it in a match yet. We've been close, so hopefully it's coming soon.

[00:05:17]>> Yeah, for sure.

[00:05:19]So, then next we have Patrick.

[00:05:21]Cool. So, I'm just going to talk about some of the software in this robot. So, the mechanical team gave the programming team a very big challenge this year with [music] this with the whole turret assembly. And so, one of the things that we really care about is we want to be able to start up the robot and have the turret on any location it's traveled since it's greater than 360°. And using just like a one-to-one absolute encoder is kind of difficult for this. So, instead we use two absolute encoders that are on two different gear ratios messing meshing with the main turret ring over here. And so, then we use that to so we always know the absolute position of our turret, so we don't have to have our drive coach on the field precisely lining it up. Um another big thing with the turret software is that we have this camera on there. So, when we were deciding [music] how we were going to localize the robot this year, one of one of our options was to have a bunch of cameras on the robot. But since, you know, Limelights are so expensive and we really like using them, we only have a limited amount. Um we decided, "Hey, let's just put it on the turret. That means we'll have basically an infinite FOV." Um so, we can have point the camera anywhere and then we'll be able to see the tags. We basically just be able to We can point the camera always at the hubs, we can always see the tags.

[00:06:23][music] Um and so, this was a bit of a programming challenge that we uh iterated on before this season. We created a test bed using our 2017 turret and we put a Limelight on there and we developed the software there and we supported it over to this turret. Um another defining feature of our robot software [music] is the shoot-on-move capability that we have. Um so, the our solution to shoot-on-move is actually extremely simple, I think, compared to a lot of other teams. Basically, what we do is we use we vary both the hood angle and the flywheel speed to create a constant time of flight shot, so that [music] all the balls have the same apex height, so they're all in the in the air for the exact same amount of time. And we basically just say, "Okay, how fast is the robot moving?" And then offset your shooting like your virtual aiming point by whatever your velocity [music] is times that time of flight. And it's worked out really well for us. So, you went over several pretty challenging [music] programming uh challenges that you that you guys weathered through this build season.

[00:07:15]What do you think was the number one most difficult challenge that you guys overcame? Um [music] honestly, probably the localization. So, localization is something we struggled with a lot in the past, especially in like other shooting games like 2024 or uh 2022. Um especially with having that camera on the turret where it's constantly so, we may have to add a whole 'nother, you know, degree of challenge. And so, the way we managed that was um mainly through that test bed we had on our 2017 robot, but we also worked a ton in sim simulation. Um so, one of the big things that we do is we keep a buffer of all the turret's different positions. Um so, we can do latency compensation basically whenever the frame comes in. So, we'll look since there's always some latency between um the Rio and the Limelight, we'll say, "When did this frame come in from the Limelight? Where was when was the turret at that position?" And then we'll update our our odometry from there. Um and so, that took a lot of trial and error to get good. Um but I think this is probably some [music] of the best localization we've had on our robot in a very long time. It's definitely impressive.

[00:08:09]All right, well, that's going to do it.

[00:08:10]Super impressive robot from Miss Daisy team 341. Thank you to Amir, Eric, Patrick, and Evan for demonstrating and presenting this machine. Uh one of the most impressive and well-executed machines in the 2026 season here in the first Mid-Atlantic region. Uh thank you again for you guys thanks to you guys again for demonstrating. Uh if you like this content, please go ahead and like and subscribe. We'll catch you next time.

[00:08:37]Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and click the bell to stay up-to-date on future fun videos. As you're getting ready for the competition season, think AndyMark as your one-stop shop for all your team [music] needs.

[00:08:47]AndyMark's Launcher in a Box is a configurable solution that so many teams are finding success with for the rebuild season. Also available at andymark.com, the AMPD AndyMark Power Distribution Board that provides 24 40 amp independently fused output channels for safe, reliable power distribution.

[00:09:01]That's andymark.com.

[00:09:03]FRCT's managed store program is an easy and profitable way to fundraise for your team or off-season event. FRCT's will handle everything from production, packaging, bulk or drop shipping, payment collection, and accounting.

[00:09:15]Teams can set their own prices and FRCT's will take care of the rest. Fill out a quote request or get more information when you schedule a callback at frcts.com.