Quote:
Originally Posted by Underdog_19
Where did you get your floor tiles? They look more heavy duty than your typical foam floor tiles.
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Confirmed! Our floor tiles are actually garage tiles, made of PVC or some such. They don't squish like foam times, but they are still a good deal softer than concrete. We decided that garage tiles are much better suited to this application than foam tiles:
- The raised tread pattern provides a nonslip surface, even when wet
- The harder plastic is much easier to clean, because it doesn't get crud embedded in its surface like foam does
- The softer surface of a foam tile would have made maneuvering the robot cart more difficult
Oh, I also forgot to mention that the rest of our pit, being completely modular, is trivial to adapt to different sized pits. Each of the rolling carts at the back of the pit is only 4 feet wide, so 9- and 8-foot pits are no problem at all; that shelf that bridges the gap between the two carts is only used if we have enough room, and we simply use less floor tiles if there's less floor to cover.
We used to do a four-sided pit, but it was far too crowded; I personally spent two competition seasons sitting on a toolbox in the back corner of the pit, wedged in between a workbench and a row of
modular shelves while programming the robot. (I'm jealous of the current drive team & pit crew: these days, they have a set of
folding stools that they can pull out of a corner whenever the space is available.)