General Strategy

Our final strategy was very offensive, centered about collecting blue balls and raising our flag while displacing other balls on the field so our opponent would not be able to score them. We optimized our robot for speed to increase the effectiveness of this path. Our strategy was changed drastically from our strategy in the mock competition because of the uprising of defensive-minded robots that block our goal, namely Atrophy Express (Team 7). Our speed ensures us that we block such robots from getting in our goal until we score the first blue ball.

On a good run, our robot would:

1. Blitz across the playing field and grab the blue ball closest to our goal and score it
2. Run back, grab the two blue balls closest to our starting zone and the opponent's goal
3. Knock the 4th blue ball away and run back to our goal to deposit
4. Attempt to go to the flag box and raise it

Basic Design

In the beginning we set out to create a simple robot, but as the needs arised, we added more and more modules to it, using all types of sensors, 3 motors, and 4 servos. In general, our robot employed a four-bar lift mechanism aided by a pair of servo-controlled jaws as our main ball-grabbing and scoring method. Our robot drives with simple differential driving, aided by two unpowered caster wheels in the front. Our gear ratio of 75:1 allows us to drive reasonably fast while being able to produce enough torque to steer. To spin the flagbox gears, we attach two coupled 25:1 geared LEGO wheels which allows us for a decent error margin while spinning the flag box.