Quote:
Originally Posted by GeeTwo
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.
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.
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The arms race in 2011 was absolutely real, and way more expensive since you were using Tetrix battery packs (and of course you have more than one) and probably smoking Tetrix motors pretty regularly at the higher levels. 2815 may have won two regionals that year, but without a minibot deployment system we were there for fun and the Black Eyed Peas concert. (We actually ditched our tube claw to try to make a mechanism. Wasn't pretty.)
I'd venture a few things set minibots on their path:
1) The restrictive materials rules.
2) The packaging needs of a robot that also (usually) had to hang tubes up high too.
3) Because there was such a huge cost for a botched deployment, you had to get something in the air every match.
4) With the limited power of a Tetrix motor, anything extraneous added mass that then had to be powered upward.
I'd love to know what other teams had developed to the point of sticking on a pole, but I doubt any of them deviated far from the formula by the later weeks of events.