[tsaksa]

The students really wanted to go over the bump, so that is what we are doing even though some of the mentors still think this puts the schedule at risk. Our team has traditionally done track drive which takes more machining, expense, and tweaking, than other drive bases. Last year they had more difficulty (than usual) getting everything done on time. So for practice over the summer they decided to build a demo-bot using regular wheeled kit-bot parts. From that experience they seemed ready to build a normal wheeled robot this year so they could focus more on the other parts of the challange. Than they saw the barrier that seemed to call out for tracks. What to do!

What we came up with is a wheeled robot that still has some track like characteristics. In stead of chains in some places it has timing belts. These belts are supported in such a way as to act enough like a track to hopefully allow the robot to avoid high centering when crossing the barrier. It is not a real track and will not be good enough to use much, but hopefully it will work just enough to navigate the barrier.

If everything works out, and that still seems like a big if right now, we will have a robot that drives around most of the time like a wheeled robot with just a little assistance from the pseudo tracks only when needed. We are using custom wheel mounting plates, but believe the design could ultimately be adapted to a kit of parts frame to allow teams to experiment with track drive without a lot of machining or expense.

The design is lower cost than traditional track drive and requires less machining because it uses the standard Gates timing belts with off the shelf pulleys. But that means you only get part of the advantages of track drive. The students are calling this variation Corvallis Spartan Drive because they do not know if it has ever been tried before. We will need to post some pictures if we ever get it working. Too soon to say if it has any advantage, or will even be competitive, but that is what happens when you try something new.