Borealis

Borealis was designed with the idea of being touch and go, picking up pixels and automatically being in the outtake as soon as they touch the robot. I opted to use linear rails for the lift due to needing precise scoring ability for this season's challenge. Off the shelf slides generally used for robotics tend to have a lot of play, which becomes prevalent with 3-4 stages. The lift uses spring-tensioned retraction and hooks to grab onto the elevated bar and use the extra strength from steel linear rails to lift the robot off the ground without damaging our lift.

Our first intake used stiff 70A durometer tubing, which jammed on pickup. By treating it as a buckling problem and lowering the tubing's Young's modulus while increasing its unsupported length, I was able to reduce the force to bend the tubing. Offset funnels were also utilized to ensure the orientation of the pixel would always be the same when moving through the intake to the storage, avoiding any jamming issues.