Building a robot is no easy task. It’s even harder when that robot has to compete at multiple events. Add the time limit of six weeks to build and it might seem impossible. Yet every competition season, LASA Robotics gets a robot out on the field. How do we do it? By using the same design process as industry professionals, the team can create an awesome work of engineering.
At season kickoff time, we learn the rules of that year’s game and then roll up our sleeves and brainstorm how we can optimize the efficiency of our competition robot’s design to earn points on the game floor.
We undergo a thorough prototyping phase to ensure the effectiveness of our ideas and then proceed with manufacturing the bot’s physical features to endure impact and move with precision, balance, and speed.
Our robots incorporate industry-standard components made of a variety of materials including aluminum tubing, poly-carbonate, and metal. The frame of our competition robots is typically made of welded aluminum and features different drive train configurations such as West Coast (6, 8, or 10 cantilevered wheels) and mecanum (omnidirectional wheels that are powered independently).
We utilize various CADing software such as Solidworks and Fusion 360. G-code is generated for CNCing parts on our Mach 3 Mill and Tormach machines, as well as creating paths for our plasma cutter.
The Electronics team acts as a bridge between the build and code teams, facilitating communication and creating a fully functional robot. We employ object-oriented programming techniques across various subsystems of the robot, each serving a specific purpose. For instance, our vision subsystem employs the OpenCV library to process video from a camera and determine the robot’s location relative to the field.
