Team 7462 Not To Scale: Quad Mecanum Glyph Intake Prototyping

[@hannahhuang1728]

Good Job

[@jojocooper9029]

is there something at the top to keep the block from moving up, or will it not continue to move up

[@adamkingcha]

came to your channel from rocket labs launch video. whats this?

[@AmbientMorality]

This is for the FIRST Tech Challenge robotics competition this year, Relic Recovery. There are two robots on each team on a 12 foot by 12 foot field. One objective of the game is to pick up foam blocks (glyphs) and lift them into a stack on the wall. Our previous system was a claw that picked up these foam blocks and raised them up, but this method was slow compared to some other mechanisms we saw at our first competition. Now we're trying to use mecanum wheels. Mecanum wheels are designed to allow forward, backwards, and turning motion - but also allow a vehicle to move side to side. They're used in some forklifts for increased maneuverability (you can look up mecanum forklift in youtube to see some videos - they're very cool!). These wheels have free rollers mounted at a 45 degree angle, which means there is a force in the axial direction. By moving the wheels in the correct manner, this axial force can be used to drive the vehicle side to side. We're somewhat abusing these wheels to provide intake. Since they provide an upward force as well as an inward force, they will intake a foam block and push it upward. This means that we can easily quickly pick up and stack two blocks in our intake and score both at the same time, which is a major advantage.