Table of Contents
● Game Analysis Process (03)
○ CDR (03)
○ Prototyping (04)
● Drivetrain subsystem (08)
○ Overview (08)
○ CAD (08)
● Iris subsystem (09)
○ Overview (09)
○ CAD (09)
● Lift subsystem (10)
○ Overview (10)
○ CAD (11)
● Cargo intake subsystem (12)
○ Overview (12)
○ CAD (12)
● Control loops (13)
○ Overview (13)
● Technical Drawings Index (18)
(Tidal Force students, Ian Macaig, Josh Shamash, Rosie Speidel, and Joe Sedutto, presenting to mentors
and industry engineers)
Prototyping
Iris
Iris
Truncated Cone
80-20 Lift
Inset Lift
Clamp Wheels
Bar of Wheels
Drivetrain Subsystem
Iris Subsystem
The Iris uses the brushes to hold balls of varying size, with
a tolerance of one inch. The Iris can intake hatch panels
and receive cargo from the aft of the robot. The entire iris
is powered off of 4 pneumatic cylinders.
Lift Subsystem
Cargo Intake
Control Loops
Understanding Control Loops
A PID (proportional-integral-derivative) closed control loop
describes the actions of a self-correcting system. To
implement such a loop, a sensor must be used to
calculate a current state of the system - position, angle,
height, etc. This value is then subtracted from the target to
generate error - this quintessential number dictates the
actions of the control loop, which seeks to minimize this
singular error.
Usage - Navigation
Millenium Toaster makes use of two kinds of sensors -
quadrature magnetic encoders, which allow the robot to
understand the speed and position of motor shafts, and
the Limelight 2 vision camera, which tells the robot the
position of various vision targets on the game field. The
numbers provided by these sensors, as well as a
knowledge of the game field, allow us to calculate error.
Our first loop is run on the drive train - we read the vertical
angle between the vision camera and a vision target, and
A
θ
H
D B
Imagine A represents the camera and B represents the center of the vision target. The
difference in height, H, is thus known. θ is a combination of the camera’s mounting angle and
the vertical angle detected by camera firmware. Knowing this, distance D can be calculated.
With this in mind, we can find and use our second error
number - horizontal offset. Consider the image below,
showing us what the vision camera sees.
Usage - Lift
The lift also implements a position closed control loop,
utilizing the TalonSRX motor controller and its built in PID
control, as well as a quadrature magnetic encoder to
sense the current position of the lift. This is then used to
maneuver the lift to various known heights to deploy
hatches and cargo in both the rocket and cargo ship.
Conclusion
This dual-loop system allows us to automatically navigate
to the correct height and position to score points,
effectively and efficiently.