[Nick Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

Team 3958, led by the famous Joe Johnson has one heck of a creative robot this year designed for triple balancing efforts.

They have a drop down "slide drive" type system so their robot can traverse either in the long direction or the wide direction. The coolest part about this mechanism is the fact that the power is transmitted 90deg throughout the drop down system utilizing nothing but friction. The pneumatic wheels in each system rub against each other to provide drive in either axis.

In addition to this, they have 4 independent "stilts" that all lie within the frame perimeter. They use these to drop down and lift/stabilize the bridge. They were able to successfully complete a triple balance in Boston this past weekend. To balance successfully, they only need to get their front wheels onto the bridge, and then drive their stilts down. When the bridge gets close to level, they can drive forward a bit, wait for the bridge to settle and retract the stilts.

On the practice field I saw them complete a triple balance in less than 15 seconds, which was quite impressive.

OH yeah, they also had an arm/intake/hopper/dumper mechanism that deposited 2 hybrid shots into the side goals extremely consistently, and was good for about 3 or 4 more in teleop. One heck of a robot for a rookie team.

-Brando

I've been waiting patiently for months to see this robot. Are there any photos of it?

-Nick