Best Body shape?
 

What do you think the best shap of a robot body is?

i.e triangle
square
circle

one like a pancake, that can run downside up

then you can name it:

pompous snodwod

cause its name will be the same upside down and verse visa.

Best body shape is whatever you can make antimatter look like.. cause then you can transport your opponent to an alternate universe.. so, go for prototyping that... just be careful you don't make yourself go away on accident ;)
*edit*
Make it a hovercraft as well, cause an antimatter hovercraft robot would be awesome.

I wonder how many times FIRST has been asked THAT question after the kickoff meeting:

"Ive got this idea for our robot, but Im not sure if the rules allow it. Is transporting your opponent into a parallel universe against the spirit of the rules?"

but I digress.

I think for each year, teams should start out with a basic two wheel design, dragging a castor for stability

then only make the drivetrain different if absolutely necessary.

also, a round chassis that spins on two wheels can never get stuck in a corner, or against a wall. but a circular chassis is not easy to make.

you Know im rigging Gullwing Doors and a Flux-Compacitor up in the 2K4 Swampthing

Re: Best Body shape?
 

Driveman,
The shape of the robot shouldn't be determined ahead of time. As you design your mechanism, let the robot chasis grow organically around it. A perfect melding of form and function.

This way, you'll have plenty of room to integrate the kill-saws.;)

Seriously... a simple square "base" with some mechanism on top usually works well. Some teams design their robot chasis/drive ahead of time. Some tweak these designs to accomodate a "ball chute" or other mechanism. Others design the robot around the mechanism, or make the chasis itself part of the mechanism.

Do whatever you feel comfortable with.

John

Go modular. Being able to piece it all together easily, just putting together four fasteners and a wiring harness for every piece of your robot is essential for ultimate goodness. And make sure your left and right motors turn the same direction.

I have a really cool idea for a body. I spent a bout twelve hours straight on the designing. It was a real headach but i believe that it will be worth it. I already have wheels and gears drawn in. I dont have motors yet because i don't know what kind we will get. I will post it later after i get access to a scanner. B/c i had to draw it by hand.

Last year one of the body designs shot down for are KOH was an tirnagle thing with tow sides the same compltly drawing a blank on the name right here:o but basically it had treads on the edges sitcking out on all sides so we could run on all sides of the triangle and plate that came down to form a bridge up for the bins. We would stick to the top with friction pads of sort that woudl lift us off the groujd so the treads could also act as conveyor belts. But the idea was scrapped for one reason or another anyway Long story short build the shape arounf ur design not ur design around the shape

Most teams build square bases. Many of these teams have the resources and creativity to build the best base possible, yet the square bases still persist. This leads me to believe that the best body shape, within reason, would be a square.

I think y'all mean rectangular when you say square, right? I mean, otherwise, what a waste of space.

Hahaha, I that brings back memories of "Team such and such would like to request that if anyone has any...umm..flux?..compacitors, that they loan it to them. Thanks"

I am soo making sure 108 is the first to ask that at regionals, heh.

Anyways, I prefer Rectangle. It fits easily into the size requirments, gives you the maximum wheel base, gives you four definite sides for slamming up against things and bots with, and leaves you with easily machinable parts (no trying to figure out how to build a circular piece of sheet metal in the pits if your armor breaks loose :-P )

Bot Shape
 

Personally I am all for the sphere idea, but good luck getting that to work in a KotH.

A circular base has lots of advantages you dont have to worry about corners on the playing field, you dont have to worry about protecting your corners, and the strength of a perfect circle is very nice, but there is also the problem that the size limitations are rectangular, so your robot would have a major size disadvantage seeing as you would have to build up instead of out, which is horrible for balance.

Triangle is just odd although if you did something like a triganol pyramid (4 triangular faces) then it could be rather useful if you were flipped or something because with just 4 wheels, two along one edge and two along its opposite skew edge, you would always have driving wheels on the ground. But yet again this is faced with the size problem.

Square, or rectangular, is seemingly the best of what you listed simply because of the way size regulations are set up. With the box your robot has to fit in having a rectangular bottom, the best way to optomize space and sit as low as possible is to spread out as far as possible in that box.

Personally though I think a design for a pentagon shaped bot would be cool. However, you can't completely determine the shape of your bot until the game is released, you do need to build your robot around the game and not around what everybody else does. I know our bot will most likely be rectangular again this year, but we will once again be more concerned with our drive train than we will with shape. I know last year we were one of the few robots that had multiple gears and could shift them on the playing field.

Good luck with whatever you design though.

flux capacitors ehh
 

Technically, an electric permanent magnet motor with a flywheel could be considered a "Flux-Compacitor" (ahem flux capacitor):). Apply current and the flywheel spins up. Remove the current, and te flywheel continues to spin, inducing a magnetic flux field around the windings.:yikes:

Now gullwing doors? What is a gullwing door?