our arm looks similar to yours so i'm curious to see how well it throws. We have 3 joints(base, elbow, and the grabber at the end is on a short joint) If you roll that all up with a box and then open it as the arm swings over the top of the robot we can get a cool trebuchet like effect. Now all it has to do is be finished... maybe tomorrow. I'll tell you if it works ^_^

With a 9 foot arm like ours it doesn't have to be moving fast to make it over the ramp. Its already sooo high up... Eat that tower of Babel! ;)

Anyway the arm theoretically does 90 degrees in 1.2 seconds and that means the end is moving about 15 feet per second. but those calculations are very optimistic. Earlier in the competition i calculated that the box would have to be going 20 feet per second or something close to that to get about 30-40 feet of distance which is about 80 foot pounds i believe. But that was calculated from the ground. I guess if you combine that movement with that of our second joint the box would be moving at approximatly 20 feet per second. So maybe just maybe it will work.


P.S. i don't think our ceilings are high enough to test this....

correct answers (hopefully)
 

i can answer some of the questions

Stephen P looks sweet.... what is the air compressor for?

last time i checked to was for our pnematics but i dont know if im at liberty to reveal what they do sorry:(


Clark Gilbert Looks very cool, it will be very interesting to watch your robot toss totes across the field.

Woohoo! 2001 TechnoKat robot in the background!

yes ur correct thanks technokats we borrowed it from u at the clinic thing, it was a big help in showing sponsers what our bot might look like

and lastly
srjjs Nice treads. Is your robot going to be under 14" tall? I can't really tell from the picture.

at last count i believe it was something like 12 inches tall but again i just sitting in fornt of a computer allday and micheal actually builds the thing


im really glad everyone is taking notice of 1024 and wait till u see our animation, we have a strong foundation and a bright future


over and out

swan

How long is your arm, and is that 1.2s all under constent acceleration?

I'm curious, because earlier this year I ruled out catapult bots as physically impossible (of the very close equivlant of, unless you can build a massless arm connected to 4 motors through a frictionless axle...) :)

Greg

us cataputing boxes is completely out.. but the arm is moving now with pheumatics.... its working very nicely... since we are going under the bar we didnt have the space to counter weight the arm and get it cranking enough to toss them....

You haven't heard of a thing called a spring have you? If you need the power of four motors then maybe you'd do better having one motor store energy, that way you don't burden yourself weight/power requirements of 4 motors and the accompanying transmission.