Robomasters: Ball Loader
During my time at Texas A&M, I competed in an international robotics competition called RoboMasters. In this event, teams build and pilot FPV-controlled robots that battle by firing hard plastic balls at pressure plates mounted on opposing robots. Each team designs multiple robot types, but most feature a shooter head (where the FPV camera is located) mounted on a two-axis gimbal and connected to an omnidirectional drive train. One of my early projects was the Ball Loader seen below.
This is a mechanism I designed in collaboration with Faris Khan on the TAMU RoboMasters team (Texas Aimbots Standard Team). This device sits below a hopper of 17mm balls, and feeds them one at a time through a 17mm tube. That tube leads to a pair of flywheels, where the 17mm balls are then shot out at enemy robots.
Images 1-2 are different angles of the finished device. The dark blue part is a wedge that forces the balls down into the inside circular channel. The biggest issue with this mechanism was jamming when the green 17mm balls contacted the blue part at weird angles. We eliminated this issue by making the dark blue part spring out of the way whenever this happens. Images 3-7 show various iterations of this mechanism over time. Images 8-9 show a testing rig we built for this device that allowed us to do long tests by cycling balls through the mechanism infinity. ​​​
Ball Loader Notebook Entry
This is a Notebook Entry I made for RoboMasters half-way through the design of the Ball Loader. It goes into a lot of detail about the difficulties of this mechanism, and why it is so prone to jamming. It also has a lot of early sketches and explains many of the design choices I made.