Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

Hi Andrew...the motors (FPs) are both on jaguars . What you see is max speed. We can dial in any speed we want. One of the things we've discovered from playing with the mechanism is that we can 'steal' a ball from another robot if our 'dribbler' spins faster than theirs.

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

Interesting concept but with 3" of intrusion into there frame plus "3 of bumpers then your 3" of bumpers this ball won't een intrude into yur frame perimiter. All that making stealing a 9" ball rather hard.

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

Corey....Good point. It will still work if the other robot doesn't have the ball 3 inches into the frame. Speaking of bumpers we are going to spend sometime this week seeing what effect that may have on our kicker trajectory. ::ouch::

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

Regarding an earlier post about the chains... we've got chains on our goal, and find that it actually takes some of the "heat" off airborne balls. Rather than rejecting the high hard shots, it seems to help keep them from bouncing out.

But I suggest you try it that way... the foam on the competition goals may have an effect, too.

Jason

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

That's what we are thinking Jason. In fact we are putting the chains on our goal this afternoon to collect data. We also want to see what effect the bumpers in the correct position may have on the kicker so we're installing some on our kicker prototype. One of the unexpected outcomes of testing of our integrated kicker/dribbler is that the ball actually goes further when its spun by the dribbler as oposed to a static kick. It's also kicking higher. This morning we've been getting 5 ft lofts on 15 ft kicks.

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

:ahh: When we put bumpers in the correct position and kicked this afternoon, we found out the ball hit the bumper and deflected noticeably. When you do the math you can see why. Our ball is 3 inches deep in the robot when kicked. That makes the top of the ball another 1 1/2 inches outside the perimeter. The bumper is a 2 1/2 pool noodle on a 3/4 piece of plywood. The bottom of the bumper could be as low as 10 inches above the ground or only one inch above the top of the ball. Doing the math a triangle with a base of 1 3/4 (3 1/4 - 1 1/2} with the other side of 1 inch has an angle of 30 deg. That means a ball leaving the robot at an angle of more than 30 deg is going to hit. If the top of the bumper is 16 inches above the ground then the triangle other side is 2 inches. That makes the angle a little over 45 deg. That means if you kicker is designed for max range (ie 45 deg) it's probably going to hit also. Bottom line is you really ought to try out your kicker with bumpers in place before you finalize your design. We're redesigning our kicking shoe for a flatter kick. I'm glad we found this out now rather that we tried to kick the first time we had the robot completely together.

Re: 1583 after 3 weeks
 

Thanks for the information, we are just now trying to get the kicker into our robot parameters in the front. Sounds like the work tonight to make some parts of the bumpers was an excellent idea. :)