Quote:
Originally Posted by Knufire
Because of how overvalued minibots were, the top teams iterated on these until there was pretty substantial design convergence to the minibot you saw in the video. Very similar to the arms race of can grabbers in 2015.
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I never heard of anyone treating motors with liquefied gasses in 2015. My understanding is that the 2011 minibot arms race was steeper than the 2015 grabbers. What surprised me when I went back and read about it was that no one (as far as I found) had implemented an ultra-simple CVT (continuously variable transmission) nor taken advantage of the ability of the minibot to have a mobile center of gravity.
Wait, what? Ultra-simple CVT? That can't be!
Actually, for a short, drag-race type run, there IS an ultra-simple CVT design. Don't think of doing this in gears, but in the diameter of the wheel. That is, start with a rather small wheel engaging the climb shaft, but with a bit of tread wrapped around it so that the wheel diameter increases (and therefore the effective gear ratio decreases) as the mini-bot completes its run. With proper design of the initial wheel shape, this transition can be continuous.
Mobile Center of Gravity? Whachu Talkin' 'bout, Willis? While it was a while back that I looked at the mini-bot rules, it seemed to me that a mini-bot was allowed to be about three times as tall as it actually had to be. So -- build the mini-bot to the shortest length possible, then stand it on a "rack" which raises it to the highest initial altitude allowed. As the robot climbs, the "rack" automatically climbs relative to the robot weight, until, at the top of the climb, the rack reaches the roof to signal contact, though the "real minibot" is still several inches lower.