DECODE

Cypher was our first robot of the season. It had a pivoting intake with compliant and vectored wheels, a turret with 270° of rotation, and an adjustable launcher. A ramp carried the balls from the intake to the launcher, Pinpoint odometry tracked its position, and a Limelight camera handled relocalization.

Like last year, we built a custom chassis, now with swerve: pocketed aluminum side plates on a carbon fiber bellypan. Thanks to Fabworks (opens in a new tab) it stayed light (about 25 lb) and compact (14 × 14.5 in). Use the code FTC23511 at checkout for 5% off at Fabworks.

Every subsystem is in our public CAD (opens in a new tab).

For the World Championship, we built a second robot, Enigma. Worlds plays ten qualification matches instead of the six at States, so the ranking points for sorting and parking would count for more, and Enigma was designed to complete every part of the game.

It traded swerve for a simpler mecanum drivetrain on a single HTD3 belt, and added a spindexer that sorts balls only when it needs to, so rapid fire keeps its speed the rest of the time. A power take-off lets a drive motor lift the whole robot on linear rails to park, and the launcher gained four counterrollers and 96 mm steel ring flywheels for accuracy from the far zone.

In the end, Cypher was the robot we played in Houston, upgraded for Worlds with an OctoQuad for localization. Both robots are in our Worlds portfolio (opens in a new tab).