Wheels, treads...
 

I heard a guy say that the 2002 FIRST Competition Rules will not allow wheels or treads on robots. How would we propell the bot though? Make a bunch of hovercrafts? Opinions welcome.

LoL
 

LoL!!!!!!!

:D


.......rumors........

You can start working on that hovercraft, but I wouldn't spend too much time on it 'til after the kickoff.

There have been rumors in the past that we would be running our robots on water, but we haven't seen it yet. Maybe we should be working on walking machines just in case we are on carpet but wheels and treads are not allowed

Junkyard Wars
 

This harkens back to an episode of Junkyard Wars when the teams had to make a walking bot. One team took a 4 wheel drive Jeep and basically put a beam between the wheel hubs on each side. I don't remember what the other guys did, but I know it was snazzier and eventually broke, leaving the Jeep to win.

Lol!
 

Hovercrafts - yes! Lol, now THAT would be a challenge!

- Katie

Not likely.
 

I always said I wanted to build a hovercraft, and everyone called me crazy.

Well, who's crazy now? :-) Anyway, I'm not all too sure you could create the lift needed to move a 130 lb. robot around a field - not to mention the lack of control and traction.

Also, I don't think it's likely that we'd see a walking robot competition. Primarily, it's unlikely because I can't think of any walking robot design that moves even remotely as fast as anything we've seen. Walking mechanisms are just too slow to make for an exciting, timely game.

Couple that with the fact that my university already has a walking robot team, and it makes it no fun at all!

But why stop at hovercrafts?! Wouldn't it be so much more fun to throw water into the competition! I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking for the platinum electrodes for the Magneto Hydrodynamic Drive! yeah....you're right, I just wanted to say magneto hydrodynamic drive....

Inventor to the Rescue
 

Build a hovercraft in Inventor, finalize it, and test in on a VR testbed. Then we'll see who's laughing.

Re: Not likely.
 

No, you're still crazy. :p

But, anywho, I think it would really really difficult to do the whole hovercraft thing, although, if it could happen, it would be really cool. The whole water thing, I still think it would be bad if, say, your robot fell over in the water. I don't know, I think it would make things very difficult without treads or wheels. And, I hope it isn't a walking robot. But, I guess we'll all have to see. It's only about a month and a half away anyway.

~Christina

Ever had a moment of "Woah!"? All this talk of hovercrafts on the forum, as i build one. They arent that complicated suprisingly, in about 30 mins i had an 18"x4" frame hovering very well. The problem with the hovercraft isnt making it, they arent stable enough to put manipulators on them, even still it would be kool.



Andrew

Muffin Fans
 

Muffin fans make excellent vector-control for smal hovercrafts. I was using them on my 10x15 inch test-bed, and they work great with the Spike modules.

Heh, back in '99 I said build a hover craft... go right over the puck. Anyhow, I say we go with flying craft... may take a little to the drivers going good, but imaging how fun that would be to do some task in the air... it would be crazy :-)

Curious...
 

Does anyone know of a material from last year's small part or additional hardware catalog that would have worked for a hovercraft skirt?

I'm not trying to say that they would have been feasible, just curious to know if it was possible.

Flexible semi-pourous materials...
 

There are some flexible, semi-pourous sheet plastics that would hold the air and let some out for cushioning and the ability to use the pump constantly. But if you're really going for a simple, easy, cheap, light skirt that works, go with two layers of vynl tarp with evenly spaced holes along the nbottoms of each layer, making sure that the holes are not directly above one another so that you get maximum air cushion. Personally, I like the tarp, because it's cheap and easy to replace when torn.

Think outside the box.

I agree hovercrafts would be cool but....

Lets say wheels and treads are outlawed. Walking robots would become the norm, or would they?
What about a robot that rolls. like that Jimmy Neutron toy at Radio Shack. the whole exterior of the robot is the transport.
Its as useful as the hovercraft idea and use s much less battery power to run.

Or a jumping robot....

Or a snake drive....

you say water, who says it would be liquid? A skating robot.

Well that was fun
Eric

Yes, but the ice thing would be hell for most teams to build a practice field with.

Anyhow, a walking robot wouldn't be that difficult. Just look at Wyachi from Battlebots.

Whyachi uses wheels. Besides walking robots are very very slow

my best friend is of the opinion that we should build a hover craft, even if wheels and treads *aren't* outlawed :D
sounds fun, huh?
true, it might be hard to get enough lift for a 130 lb bot...

Hate to burst your bubble, but it's been done. Back in '97 (I believe that was the year), a team (I believe it was the MIT team but I could be wrong) built a hovercraft. It couldn't do anything but float around as a hovercraft. So FIRST used it for the placebo (then it was 1v1v1 but they couldn't always field 3 teams so sometimes there was a "placebo" that really didn't do anything) that year. I personally didn't see it but I've heard good things about it.

Matt

Defining exactly what is and isn't a walking robot is pretty tough as BattleBots has found out. The Season 3.0 Whyachi bots and some others found a clever way to make walking robots that were just as fast and powerful as wheeled bots.

The Season 3.0 Whyachi's used a clever cam mechanism that allowed the robot to travel very fast (they were running at 25% of top speed on TV) and was almost indistinguisable from wheeled movement. By doing this they got a huge weight bonus which really helped out their robots. These walking mechanisms are now outlawed and walkers get a small weight bonus now.

For Season 4.0 all four of their bots were wheeled; Son of Whyachi, which used to be a HW, was brought into the SHW class and isn't technically a walker anymore.

Dan

Getting lift on the hovercraft isn't hard, I'm sure a drill motor or two could do it (albeit not terribly high.) Getting *thrust* is super hard, and going fast in a small space or having any sort of control is much harder.

Watching a FIRST game with hovercrafts would be pretty boring I think.

Dan

It was '96

Hover crafts
 

Last year at nationals, some members of our team built a hovercraft in our pits out of spare kit parts and 4 model airplane propllers. I believe we did it with 4 Fischer-Price motors. It worked fairly well. It only took a couple of hours to build.