This Robot is the NEW META for VEX IQ Level Up

[00:00:00]In my last IQ video, I talked about how the meta for level up is a catapult robot. But, there's a big issue for catapults. Sure, it can score on level two and three consistently, but level four, which is the main objective of the game in my opinion, is a lot harder. You have to shoot at a steeper angle on a much higher arc, which means you either have to make your L3 scoring really awkward to use the same catapult and same tension, or you have to build a complex mechanism just to switch between the two angles. Now, that's why some teams combine their catapult with a lift. Let's take a look. All right, so this video has been circulating around a bit. It's a bit old, and it's a pretty chunky bot and is also kind of blurry, so just bear with me for this part.

[00:00:40]Basically, they seem to have a conveyor intake with some flaps on top to get it in their catapult, and it looks like it tries to shoot across field, but it doesn't really make it. And here's another similar robot's video. So, both of these bots are barely moving from the load station, so they're basically shooting from almost 8 ft away. And from that far, you need such a low curve for your beanbag shooting that the bag picks up a lot of speed, and it probably will slip out or slide out or bounce off of level three, which is why this video you can see that it mostly gets level one.

[00:01:13]So, at least currently, the best way to reliably score on the L3 is just to drive back to the yellow bar to shoot, or you have to tune your catapult to reliably shoot from afar, which is really hard. But, we'll talk about that later. Anyways, the catapults on these robots, or at least their use of it, doesn't seem that crazy. But, the important part is their lift. So, you might have noticed this long diagonal um beam from the top right of the robot all the way to the back of the robot.

[00:01:39]And this is the score on the L4 goal, which if you don't know is the highest value goal, and it's extremely hard to get. So, in my last video, I showed a catapult that could technically score on the L4 goal, but it had to be at a specific location on the field at a specific angle, which makes it really hard to pull off in a match because there's really not a good way to align to it. And if you miss, that yellow bean bag is now across the field. So, you're spending 10 to 15 times the amount of time just getting it back to your robot.

[00:02:07]However, with a lift and a claw, it's going to stay touching your robot the entire time, not in the air, so you can carefully drive your robot and make sure the yellow bean bag actually makes it onto the L4 goal. So, there are two lift types you can use to score on L4, a two-bar or a double reverse four-bar.

[00:02:24]So, let's start with a two-bar and look at how this robot does it. So, again, it's still very blurry, but you can more clearly see the two-bar down here. It's connected here, and it looks like just 1x beams, and of course, you can see the pneumatics for the claw back here. So, when it's all all the way down, it is a bit blurry, but yeah, you can probably see that's the bean bag right there. And when it's all the way down, the claw is just going to stick out backwards, and you can grab the bean bag like that.

[00:02:54]Then, the two-bar rotates upwards, and it ends up in this position, like this.

[00:02:59]And it just lets go and puts it down onto the L4 goal. Now, if you look at the claw and the arm together here, we can see that it's actually mounted at a flat position. So, that when it goes to score on the L4 goal, it's actually already going to be in the correct position, right? And we can see that right here in the video. But, if you really want to, you can use pneumatics to push the claw perfectly flat just to make sure that there's no chance of it falling out, just like how the robot in the video does it.

[00:03:26]So, again, I would assume that this is just one motor arm because really there's no weight, and the pneumatics are really light, the claw is really light, and the bean bag is also really light. So, one motor could definitely do the trick. And here's another video by team in our Discord, TCPS Robo Knights, and they already have a great two-bar prototype, which basically shows much clearer, not super blurry, how this two-bar actually works. Now, the other lift that we can do L4 scoring with is a double reverse four bar. So, this video is from team 74801A [clears throat] No Limits, who got 116 points in this video. The video is linked down in the description. Make sure to check it out.

[00:04:03]So, basically, they have a double reverse four bar lift as we can see here. And on the lift, there is a claw.

[00:04:09]And this claw can be pistonized in and out, right? So, they use this claw, when it's down, it's a vertical claw, so it's facing downwards. They go ahead and grab all of the bean bags. And to score on L4, they just lift the double reverse four bar up and then drop it onto the L4 goal.

[00:04:27]Their lift is mounted in the front of the robot, and so is the claw, of course. And because the double reverse four bar is a vertical upwards lift, they can also score on the L4 goal at the front of their robot. So, all of their scoring and intaking is done at the front of their robot.

[00:04:43]Now, for the actual scoring on the L3 and L2 goals on the pyramid goal, of course, they're going to be using a catapult. So, when they get the bean bag into their claw at the front of the robot, they use the pistons, as I had mentioned earlier, where it can drop the bean bag directly onto the catapult, and then they just shoot it. But, they still need to back all the way up until the yellow bar to shoot. And they seem to have aligners to make sure that they are perfectly straight, and they are at the correct distance from the yellow bar at the back of their robot. It's kind of hard to see, but it seems to be like these angle pieces, and they just slot into the yellow bar.

[00:05:18]Which is the most efficient way is really, really hard because of the shape of the curve.

[00:05:23]But, shooting from this yellow bar is also extremely time-consuming, and you won't get enough points from it. But, one of our alliance members, Quasar from 3722U, did manage to get super consistent level three catapult scoring from in between the bar and the load station. So, it's not all the way there at the load station yet, but it's still around 2/3 of the field, so like 5 to 6 ft away from the load from the pyramid goal. But, the moment we try to go to the load zone or a bit further, it just gets way less consistent and the bean bags start just bouncing off or they just slide off completely. So, catapulting from the load station will be extremely hard this season and we'll need to see if there's a way to make it more consistent, maybe a new catapult design, or maybe a new scoring method altogether.

[00:06:08]Anyways, this team's design, the combination of the catapult and the lift, as well as the retractable claw at the top of it, does really seem like the meta bot currently, but there is still a long way to go because even such a good bot still only scored 116 points in 60 seconds. So, make sure to look out for new videos because China is about to have their first competitions in the coming weeks. And yeah, hopefully we can see more exciting robot designs. But, still like 60 seconds, which is the skills and match time, seems like this team, with such a good bot, they only scored nine bean bags in total, five of which were on L4, but still not nearly enough to reach the max score or even get close to it. So, yeah. Anyways, if you guys enjoyed this video, please subscribe and like this video. It really does help a lot. And to see everything we showed in this video, as well as the videos in full quality, join our Discord in the link below. And I'll see you in the next video.