Thread: Driving
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Unread 06-04-2015, 02:08
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AKA: Gus Michel II
FRC #3946 (Tiger Robotics)
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Re: Driving

Hmmm, let's be a bit more complete:

Autos: I drove a '70 AMC Hornet in college named Betch. It survived my six college years (four undergrad, two grad) and several collisions. After mom sold it, somebody eventually killed it by racing it across the Arizona desert without water in the radiator. Next was an '86 Chevy Celebrity (gack - blew a head gasket three years in on legal-speed highway driving) that I replaced about a year after the note was paid off; listed for completeness only, not something I'd ever recommend. My next car was a '91 Jeep Cherokee Sport, which I bought in part because it had essentially the same Rambler engine as the Hornet. It survived both the Metairie flood of May '95 (water line between "Sport" and "Cherokee" on the outside) and a clumsy sugaring of the gas tank around 2000. I sold it for $1 after Katrina to someone who needed a first car more than I needed a second. It was on the road for at least two more years. Now I drive an '05 Saturn Vue, which is now far from "clean", but keeps running like a top. I'll probably get a Subaru Outback when it's time. All of these were automatic transmission, but I have driven a standard, though probably more on the left side of the road when traveling than on the right in the U.S.
Screws and nuts: I prefer my manual pocket screwdriver for small jobs, but usually a DeWalt when powered is indicated. I also use a neat toolbox I bought from the team that was donated by iFixit. (Hey, you gotta shout out the sponsors once in a while, right?)
Nails: I still prefer the old 16 oz claw hammer when appropriate, but I do have a few lighter and heavier for when the need strikes.
Livestock: Just once, when I was about 20. We just had to get about a dozen head of cattle off of US 90 and behind a fence. Mostly a bunch of claps and "Hyaw"s, as we didn't have time to saddle the horses. Good fun, and the owner gave us one steer's worth of beef.
Draft animals: just horses, and those with quite light loads, and not long enough to determine a preference, except that Pancho was much more businesslike than Charlie. (Both names of the horses, in case you're confused.)
Robots: In four years of competition, the team has used 6-wheel skid-steer, 2 wheel drive with two idle omnis, mecanum, and H-drive (now stripped down to omni tank). We also used a 6-wheel skid-steer on the t-shirt cannon, and essentially a "Boe-bot" drive with two traction drive wheels and a transverse omni on some summer projects. I've built small scale linkage and "semi-swerve" drives (only 180 degrees of swerve supported, using four servos) just to try things out. I'd really like to try kiwi.
Golf: never played - and I never drove Ms Daisy, nor any commercial vehicles, either.
Drive controls: automotive, obviously for those things. For robots, we've used explicit tank (two joysticks), arcade, arcade with strafe, and probably some others. My favorite for a holonomic (kiwi, H-drive) or redundant (mecanum, swerve) drive train is a 3-D joystick with a twist axis, using the joystick position for translation and the twist for rotation.
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