At the beginning of the season, the team must improve Scrumtrooper, our robot from last year, competitor in Los Angeles, in order to meet the “AT HOME” challenge. One of these evolutions concerns the conveyor.

The idea is to replace the current conveyor with a barrel, because we realized during the competition in Los Angeles that this mechanism was a real plus for the robots that had implemented it: it saves time and avoids ball jams when loading the bales.

The conveyor is an essential part of the robot because it allows the bales recovered by the Intake on the field to be transferred to the feeder; the feeder then guides these bales to the shooter.

The advantage of a barrel is that it allows the bales to be stored as they come in and to be ejected on demand, where a conveyor only transfers the bales, with a high risk of blockage if several bales are together in the conveyor.

Part of the team works on the barrel. At the moment, it is still in the prototyping phase: several trials are necessary to find the ideal mechanism and settings for the robot.

The barrel has a motor that will turn the bale tank and thanks to blades will send the bales into the feeder. This element is similar to the system of a revolver.

One of the problems to be solved at the moment concerns the positioning of the balls in the feeder. Several avenues are being explored.

The construction of the cylinder is a real challenge for the team because this system has never been proposed in competition.