2017 Zeppelin

The demands of the 2017 FIRST Robotics competition game, STEAMWORKS, require robots to demonstrate versatility at three disparate tasks. Robots collect and shoot 5” yellow-green wiffle balls, known as fuel, into high and low goals; collect and deliver gears to the center-of-field ‘airships’ to set rotors in motion, and, finally, climb aboard the ‘airship’ at the end of the playing time, 2 minutes and 30 seconds. This year, 1816’s robot is designed to accomplish all three tasks. The wiffle ball/fuel shooting mechanism uses two flywheels fed by dual augers. The two shooters are angled to aim at the top goal, a “steam boiler” set in a corner of the competition field. The gear collection and placement mechanism sits in front of the fuel collector and uses pneumatics to ease gear collection for the human player. During the autonomous period when robots operate independently using pre-programmed instructions, Zeppelin uses a camera beneath the pneumatics mechanism to track to the lift and place a gear. Mounted on top of the shooters is the climbing mechanism- a shaft with Velcro that spins and grabs onto the rope dangling from the airship

Game:

FIRST Steamworks As in past games, two alliances of three individual teams and their robots compete on a field to score “match” point to win the game and ranking points to advance to playoff rounds.The game has a steampunk theme and teams are required to shoot wiffle balls which represent fuel into a simulated boiler that transfers the generated steam into an airship in the middle of the field. Each alliance has one airship, which they pressurize with steam from the boiler and load with plastic gears from the field. At the end of the match, robots can climb and hang on team-supplied ropes (or standard ropes supplied by FIRST) attached to the airship for additional points.