2-Bit was our robot for the 2024-2025 Season: Into the Deep. The Into the Deep Game is summarized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewlDPvRK4U4. This season, I was the Build Lead that organized the subteam to work together and satisfy our goals for the season.

Our goal with this robot was to improve from our V1 robot, Mecha Edgar and advance to the State Championships. Overall we wanted to reach the high basket in order to score our points, so we wanted a pick and place mechanism to quickly pick up from the submersible and extend far upward to the bins.

We did a lot of research on our game strategy, and we landed on the idea to specialize in the top basket. This is because most of the other teams with claw robots could easily complete this task but could not easily complete the high bin. We reaslised we wanted to do an active intake when we saw a team in Australia using two small rollers on each side for efficient pick up and quick outtake. Finally, slides did not work very well for our first robot, so we advanced to box tube extension in which strong linear spring would extend our intake/outtake mechanism quickly.

We started by designing our usual custom drivebase with the motors mounted in the middle of the robot and belted to the wheels. We then created our large arm mechanism that was powered by two strong motors due to the immense weight of the box tube extension. We had a custom box tube kit shipped to us to easily test out and use with our intake/outtake prototypes. Finally, I design our claw intake while Justin designed our active intake, hence the name, 2-Bit, for its two interchangeable mechanisms. I used a similar claw design as some very efficient teams where each side of the claw was a pyramid to adjust the game element naturally into a perpendicular position when the claw closed around it. I made it a differential claw so that the claw could move up and down while also having the ability to rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. We used three servos for my intake and three for Justin's to maximize functionality.

Unfortunately, we did not advance, but we played well given our match schedule and won the Connect Award for our outreach at the League Championships. Our robot overall did not perform up to par besides good driving. The box tube extension, though efficient when working at a high caliber, was very hard to maintain, making us replace the string holding it down almost once every two matches at our league championship. Our intake mechanism was also not made to slide around the ground, so it was easily broken when we tried to move forward.