Jones 3

About Our Robot

Jones 3 is our robot for the 2025 Reefscape season. We maintained our momentum from Jones 2 and turned it into success! In this game you had to place PVC pipes, called Coral, on a rack with 4 levels of varying heights. This rack also had large green balls, called Algae, which had to be removed to score Coral. They could also be scored by putting them in a net.

Drive: 

We used Neo Vortex Swerve Drive, which was similar to last year's drive. It was geared it for maximum speed. We ironed out all of the weird kinks and issues Jones 2 had with its swerve.  

Intake: 

Our robot was fed directly from the coral station. We did this because it was the easiest and most straight forward option.. 

End effector: 

Compliant wheels were used to dispense coral on to the reef. We ignored the Algae as they weren't worth the effort. Instead we just removed them off the reef. To do this, we used a small arm with complaint wheels, affectionately named Wheely. We rebuilt it after the first competition to make it lighter and more durable. 

Elevator: 

We used the thrifty bot elevator. We chose this because of the spring which helped raise it. With the elevator we mastered PID tuning and control. It had three set points: ground level, level 2 coral, and level 3 coral. We originally planned to do Level 4, but the elevator could not reach high enough. It was too late into the build season to change it. 

Climber: 

Originally, we attempted to build a climber for a deep climb, but the robot kept tipping over and we struggled to make the chain not touch the robot. We also thought about having a shallow climb, but we decided that scoring Coral would be more effective instead of climbing. Because we couldn't make a climber in time, we decided against having one. 

Problems: 

The power button was hit by algae and coral, shutting our robot off in two matches. We 3d printed a cover to fix this issue. In addition, Coral kept getting stuck in middle of robot. This was fixed by filling in the middle of our robot and raising it up above the bumpers so no coral could get stuck. 

Fun Facts: 

On Statbotics, our robot is ranked 4th in the world in level 3 coral scoring! Our electrical components were mounted vertically this year instead of the standard horizontal layout that most teams go for. This made electrical work easier on our robot. It's also very cool to look at! 

Looking forward: 

Our main issue is autonomous mode where we were the most inconsistent in. We are looking to add April Tag localization and auto-alignment in next year's robot. Code team is currently hard at work researching and studying on improving our autonomous for next year!