[patrickrd]

Yan deserves an awful lot of credit for coming up with this idea, it's definately one of the original ideas I've seen in some time. Upon one of my weekly visits to the high school to see the progress of the robot, Yan showed me a sketch of this idea. Some of my original questions were:
"Is that legal?"
"How is that supposed to lift 130 lbs???"

Anyway, after at least a half hour of pressing the idea on me (it took me about this long for me to understand the principle concept involved), he finally convinced me that it would work, and then shortly after that I became convinced it would have been the coolest mechanism I've ever seen on a FIRST robot. So I helped him work on the design, pointed out that you need omniwheels in order to make it work, and another college member of the team pointed out that you can make it work spring-loaded, without need for a third actuator. So we drew up this model... Unfortunately, it is illegal The only problem I can see with it is that there is a slot milled out of the vertical bars allowing the horizontal bar to move up and down in between matches, which may screw up the omniwheels in this device, but I'm sure that they could be optimized to work even given the slot.

I think it would be really sweet to make one of these devices that is battery powered (4 Lithium-Polymer batteries would work well and is the size of a cell phone), and controlled using radio.

Anyway, awesome idea Yan. I'm definately available to help work on it for kicks and giggles it if you'd like to. Not sure where I'll find the time......... But..... Too cool to pass up.

- Patrick