Self righting
 

I have heard a lot of talk about people planning to right their robots. The question now is, HOW are you planning to right your robot? Theoretically, one could use the hanger to do that, but I would like some more input.

Re: Self righting
 

You could buy some surplus boosters for an R2 unit;
or you could just use an arm if you can't find any. my idea at the beginning of the season was a bent arm that could stow away within the bumper zone. the hinge would be at or slightly above the top of the bumper. it would (while folded) go down to about the bottom of the bumper then project into the robot, perpendicular to the first segment and the bumper, for a little more than 16 inches. when it was deployed it would sweep over the top of he robot (which is on the ground) and push it up. by the end of the righting sequence, the arm would extend over the top of the bumper with the longer segment pointing downward.
.
from this:
(bumper)L____________
.
to this:
r--------
l(bumper)
l
l
l
l
l
.
<not to scale>
.
it was thrown out to save weight, complexity, and...

Re: Self righting
 

Our arm has enough torque to lift our robot. Hence, we use it both to hang and to right ourselves if we flip. We also use it for some other things :D

Re: Self righting
 

Our "righting" mechanism is making sure that our robot doesn't flip over.

Re: Self righting
 

I dont think righting your self will be very important. One how offten are you going over the bump? And two if you are fliped durring the finaly you most likely wont have time to right your self and hang.

Re: Self righting
 

Don't tip and you don't have to right yourself... :rolleyes:

The easiest way to integrate self righting into a robot is to make your hanging mechanism have enough torque to do it, probably. Seeing as 2791's hanger is somewhere between a non load bearing arm and nonexistent (I'll tell you which in 4 days...) we won't be doing so this year. If 2791's robot gets tipped too much, we'll bolt a roll cage or something on top to make it easier for others to give us a slight nudge to pop us back.

Though I don't see our robot tipping much. Famous last words? Perhaps.

Re: Self righting
 

Self righting is ALWAYS a good idea. In 8 years of mentoring I have seen more robot flip on a completely level field and take an alliance out of being competitive than I can count. For this reason I make sure all of my teams robots have a CG designed to be less than 4 inches off the ground when possible.

IMHO either make your robot unflipable or give yourself a way to right your robot otherwise you will regret it.

Re: Self righting
 

To with what Peter said... the unexpected ALWAYS happens at competition. We learned this our rookie year, when we built a bot designed to hold 1 robot off the ground... and ended up with two.

Re: Self righting
 

the robostangs, from MVHS said that their robot looked like a VW bug, and if they tip, it'll go until their wheel touches and they can gun their drive wheels.
supposedly, if they gun it over the bump, it will flip and keep rolling.