4237 Team Lance-A-Bot | Behind the Bumpers | FRC REBUILT Robot

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:08]Hello Fun Nation. My name is James Checkiny here with team number 4237 Lancot here at the Michigan State Championship. Incredible breakout season for this robot. Two event wins for them already. They're doing great here at states. Really interesting design, really strong agitating mechanism, consistent intake, a wide shooter. Lots to learn about here on behind the bumpers here with me. I have Parin, Cole, Cole, and Logan. Let's find out more here on fun. All right, Parn, why don't you get us started? Let's talk about this really robust intake you have here.

[00:00:35]>> Yeah. So, um, going into it, we have the intake in and out. It's just slap down.

[00:00:42]We have it powered by two X44s down here. And the reason that we did two is if either side goes down, the other side will still keep it powered. So, if either side when we had a chain breakout, we were still completely fine and still working. Our rollers are run co-axually. So that means that the motors for the both of them always stays on the inside when we're playing because if those get hit, that's so much money's worth of damage. Um, then those go through these belts over here where we have a couple of interesting gears and whatnot to make sure that we get the right configuration of the rollers.

[00:01:16]Uh, these are polycarbonate tubes, 16th in. And then we custom made the stubs for them and 3D printed those ourselves out of PACF just because we didn't want to spend money. And again, that's just goes into reusability. So, we have a lot of extras. And then after our first competition, something that we noticed is we originally didn't have this bar right here. We call it the breaker bar because it absorbs all the impact for us. So, there's a lot of these scuffs and whatnot. And so, whenever our impact takes a hit, it just bends in and bends right back.

[00:01:49]Before we get to our next segment, we'd like to thank the following. FRCT's managed store program is an easy and profitable way to fundra for your team or offseason event. FRCTS will handle everything from production, packaging, bulk or drop shipping, payment collection, and accounting. Teams can set their own prices and FRCTS will take care of the rest. Fill out a quote request or get more information when you schedule a call back at frT.com.

[00:02:13]Build your alliance with so many other first alumni who go to Ketarine University. Every student at Ketaring experiences her cutting edge co-op programs that seamlessly blend the professional and academic worlds.

[00:02:23]Ketarine co-ops are a fully immersive working experience at the leading edge of industry. Head on over to ketaring.edu/first to learn more about their incredible programs and to get more information.

[00:02:33]Really cool. Lots of engineering that's gone into that design there. Want to talk a little bit more about this hopper floor. So Cole, can you tell us a little bit more about some of the agitation that happens in here? How do you guys get a really good throw throughput?

[00:02:44]>> Yeah, for sure. So, our agitator, it uses um offset non-concentric rollers to kind of get more surface contact with the balls and really kick them back. Um, as you saw with Barn, it can easily lift up to access the battery and components underneath. Uh, for the indexer, we use it uh 3D printed vector intake wheels.

[00:03:06]Uh, we 3D printed them inhouse to kind of save money.

[00:03:10]Uh, they both run off the same motor. Uh so that saves a little bit of weight. Um but yeah, that's uh pretty much it.

[00:03:20]Yeah.

[00:03:20]>> Any iterations you guys have gone through? It's pretty uh you know, well thoughtout design. Tell me through some of the changes maybe you've made throughout the build season and comp season.

[00:03:28]>> Yeah, for sure. So we originally were experimenting with what type of rollers to use. Uh we even tried like square rollers um to try to kick the balls. Um what we ended with was um these non-concentric rollers that um kind of kick the balls more. Uh it also reduces the treadmilling that uh we see with a lot of teams uh which is where the ball kind of stays stuck between two rollers.

[00:03:54]Having them offset um really helps just move them backwards.

[00:03:58]>> Cool. Cole, thank you. So I want to talk a little bit more about the shooter now.

[00:04:00]So we're going to pass it over to our other Cole here. You tell me a little bit more. Got a nice wide design. How has it been so successful for you guys?

[00:04:06]Our biggest thing is just our indexing speed. With the Vector intake wheels that we have here, um, we're able to bring them right into our accelerator system that's run off of 44. And then they come to up to our flywheel, which we have three Kraken X60s running with a steel flywheel. And we wanted early in the season, we originally had a uh double shooter with a plate in the middle, but we had issues with jamming and inconsistent feeding. So, we made the swap to a drum, getting rid of that plate, and we saw an increase of our balls per second from around five to now where if we have a full hopper, we can hit nine balls per second. So, it's been a huge improvement. We also are running a chain off of our motors because we had belts that were blowing up. When we were running it in our old system, the tread that itself of the teeth would just come off in one piece, and we didn't want to have constant wear and tear to worry about. So, we made a switch to the chain, which allows a faster acceleration and just makes it uh worry-f free. We haven't had to really fix this in our two most recent competitions.

[00:05:21]>> Really smart there, Cole. Nice iteration. One of the things that I think is really cool when watching your robot is expandable hopper here you guys have. It's able to hold a lot more fuel.

[00:05:28]I know Pan, you want to talk a little bit more about that? Let's hear about this.

[00:05:30]>> Yeah. So, after our last competition, which was Battle Creek, we were pretty happy with all of our subsystems and we had a little bit of extra weight. So, going into it, our climb wasn't working the best. So, we thought, what could we do to improve our points? and looking off of teams like Citrus and whatnot, we thought vertical expansion would be the way to go. So, what's really cool about this is we had this built in about three days and it only required about $50 of parts. So, we spent a lot of time making sure that it was as cheap and quick to build as possible. The way that it runs is we have these two herring bone gears over here, which this acts as our jack shaft cuz we already had the shaft here holding the hopper. And we've used these, 3D printed these cuz we didn't want to order anything from WCP. They've been working so well for us and they work so well. And then it's just a rack and pinion system over here. It's a aluminum pinion down here. And so that when that rotates it just You want to help lift it up? Oh yeah, it just lifts right up like that.

[00:06:37]Something else that I think we did interesting was our net. So, we had a lot of balls fall out as well. So, what we originally tried doing is we just had these little keychain retractable holders and they were working kind of, but they didn't do so well cuz balls could still go through. So, we ended up custom weaving this net using a lot of zip ties and paracord and so we did that to both sides and that's what keeps us with all those balls. Wouldn't be F FRC without zip ties, right?

[00:07:01]>> Really cool design and really great way to improve your robot. Definitely paying off so far at states. you guys were able to hold a lot of fuel and go through the the bump in in the trench. I noticed in one of your last matches where you very smartly were, you know, facing defense and were able to pull down the retractable hopper and then go through the trench. So kudos to your drive team for that. Want to talk a little bit more about the software here, Logan. Lots of stuff that goes into that for for Lancot. Tell me more. Yeah, so the main strength for our software is our vision system. So right now we're just running um one Limelight 3G. We've kind of bounced between having one here and then having a second one on the other side facing the opposite direction now that we have our expanding hopper. We decided to take that off for states. So, right now we're just using this one Limelight 3G and we use uh Mega Tag 2 to get a very accurate pose all throughout the match. So, using that pose um we're able to shoot on the move. So using our pose along with getting the chassis speed from our swerve drives, we can iterate to the target that we have to aim for to shoot on the move, which lets us play a lot better against defense. So we see a lot of teams struggle against when they uh get hit by a robot. They miss a lot of their shots. So as we're shooting, the driver just has to hold a button and the robot basically takes care of the angle and then the power so we can make a lot. It's also been really nice for our autonomous. So, in our first two competitions, we were having a lot of problems getting bumped in auto and then missing our autos. So, because we just have one camera, we have to make sure that in as much match time as possible, we're looking at the hub because that has the most tags. So, while we're picking up in the neutral zone and then as we're coming back, we're looking at the hub tags, which allows us to correct. So, we've been able to get bumped either on the center line, we've been bumped in our neutral zone by our teammates, or we've been bumped in our alliance zone while we're shooting and we're still able to to hold a really consistent auto. So that's been a really big strength for us.

[00:08:47]>> Well, Lancot, really incredible robot this year. You guys put a lot of thought and effort into it and it's paying off for you guys. This robot is really built to play rebuilt at the highest level. So exciting to see run for you all the rest of the competition here. And thank you all so much for watching. My name is James for the Fun Robotics Network.

[00:09:02]Signing off.

[00:09:04]Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and click the bell to stay up to date on future fun videos.

[00:09:10]Build your alliance with so many other first alumni who go to Ketarine University. Every student at Ketaring experiences her cutting edge co-op programs that seamlessly blend the professional and academic worlds.

[00:09:19]Ketering co-ops are a fully immersive working experience at the leading edge of industry. Head on over to ketarine.edu/first to learn more about their incredible programs and to get more information. FRCT's managed store program is an easy and profitable way to fundra for your team or offseason event.

[00:09:35]FRCTS will handle everything from production, packaging, bulk or drop shipping, payment collection, and accounting. Teams can set their own prices and FRCTS will take care of the rest. Fill out a quote request or get more information when you schedule a call back at >> frcts.com.