Re: How's your ramp?
 

Has anyone thought about not using a ramp? If a robot could make itself wide enough and lift itself high enough it could then lower itself onto a stack of game pieces and pull up its wheels from the floor. I figure that two doughnuts stacked would be high enough.:yikes:

Re: How's your ramp?
 

Not legal - check the rules.

Re: How's your ramp?
 

As long as we can keep the rest of our robot anorexic enough, we plan on having 2 ramps fold down off of our sides. Our alliance members, if able to, would climb up the ramp, but not on top of our bot. Then using a pneumatic foot, the part of our ramp on the ground will raise, turning the ramp into a platform. The upside is that the system only has to lift half the weight of each robot, and it has built in outriggers. Downside, is that it relies on our alliance being able to climb about a 19 degree slope... we are trying to devise a method to decrease that.

Re: How's your ramp?
 

Do you get extra points if you do it fast enough that your alliance partners catch air? ;)

Re: How's your ramp?
 

We look to be adding ramps along the front in such a way that our robot provides about half of the platform for our partners, and a seperate platform provides the other part.

Of course, we're focusing on our arm first, so if we don't have enough weight we'll toss off the ramps and go arm only.

Re: How's your ramp?
 

We are in the process of designing a forklift-type lift mechanism that would hinge down to be level with the top of our bot (13" fromthe ground) at the end of the match. The prongs on the lift that hold the pool tubes during play would be the proper length to support it. We are going to have a ramp fold down in the back that will allow our alliance partners that are narrow & long to drive up onto our bot and then on across onto the back of the forks. We also probably will have a ramp out the side, so that the occasional wide & short bot can get up behind the first. in the case of two long bots, one would just follow the other up. In our preliminary figures, the forks will be 50 some inches long, which allows for very comfortable space for the other bots' bumpers. It looks like our forks are going to be 5" wide. I personally think that this will be plenty wide enough for a competent driver to get and stay on. The issue right now is finalizing the actual lift design with a pivot at the base.

Re: How's your ramp?
 

One design being drawn out right now for our team is a 4-bar mechanism on each side of the robot, starting out collapsed. then, you could say the vertical legs, will be pushed upwards each by 2 2in bore 8 in stroke cylinders. Its more promising than a ramp because it gives more space for the arm than an accordian ramp design, A drawing can give you a better picture as to why, but i do not have one at the moment.

Re: How's your ramp?
 

We did some calculations today and found you can just barely lift 2 170lbs. robots with 4 pneumatic tanks and 4 2" bore pistons (2 on each side of the robot) at 60 psi. We've decided to use 6 pistons to overengineer the mechanisms. If our calculations are correct, everything should run smoothly.