Re: Round Robot(s)
 

What the students did was hook a industrial vacuum bag to a compressor and bent the layers with that. They pretty much glued them together, stuck them in vacuumed the air out and let it sit for a day.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Team 2620 isn't round nor a rectangle ;) *hint* corner climb *hint*

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Are you a pentagon?

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

No sir, we have 8 'sides'

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Another picture with finished bumpers in competition, looks like those might even be reversible with that seem down the middle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daniele...n/photostream/

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Out of curiosity, is there really that much usable space created by using a round robot as opposed to the standard polygon shape?

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Let's assume a circular robot and a rectangular robot with the maximum allowed frame perimiter (112 inches).
For the circular robot C = 2πr. Since C = 112, the radius of the circle is 56/π or approximately 17.825 inches, and it's area is πr^2, which is 3161/π or approximately 998.220 square inches.
For a rectangular robot, we have 112 = 2l + 2w, and A = lw, or A = l(56 - l). With some calculus, we can find that the maximum area occurs when the robot is a 28x28 square, with an internal area of 784 square inches. In other words, a circular robot can have up to about 28.339% more usable area inside it's frame perimeter than a rectangular one.
You could run the numbers for any other polygon, if you really wanted to, but I'll leave that up to you (I'm too lazy). You'll find that as you increase the number of sides on your polygon, the maximum area will approach, but never reach, that of a circle with the same perimeter.

As for how useful this extra internal area is, that can only really be answered on a case-by-case basis by each time based on how much space their subsystems use.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

That's more of what I meant, I understand the calculus behind it but I was curious if the teams using it actually found that they have more space to place things or if it seemed about the same as a polygonal frame.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

From a strategic perspective, a circular robot would be harder to block, because any typical rectangular robot would just kind of "slide" to one side in a collision (though on the flipside, this would also make them less effective as defense robots).

From what I can see in the pictures of 2836 and 4743, there seems to be a lot of unused space inside their perimeter, but their robots don't seem to do a whole lot. I don't see any shooter on 2836's bot, and 4743's just looks like a simple 1-point dumper. I think they'd be able to use more of that space if their robots had more functionality, i.e a floor pickup or a 30-point climb.

Sorry if this post sounds harsh towards these two teams. I don't intend to put your robots down, just making some observations about how you've used your internal space.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

1829 has a round robot this year. As to how we made the bumpers, a ShopBot(CNC router). The ShopBot got here about a week ago, so that was interesting. Looking forward to competition in Richmond tomorrow!

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

The bumpers are reversible, I sewed them with the seem down the middle.

The circle fits our shooter right along the edges, this is a shooter. Our circle robot is not a 1-pt dumper. Check us out at Troy, now that we have our programming worked out, your opinion will definitely change.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

It's a Battle Roomba!

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Here is a picture of our FIRST alliance ;) at the Portland Autodek Regional. In the picture is clear that we are indeed round.

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

I'll second that it is indeed round, they were really fun to watch :)
The nerd inside me really loved it when they spun with their lights on :D

Re: Round Robot(s)
 

Do you have any other pictures of your shooter from a better angle? From the ones in this thread, I'm having trouble seeing how your frisbees can get the air to make it into the other goals, unless your shooter's angle is adjustable.