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Unread 18-10-2004, 19:49
Tom Bottiglieri Tom Bottiglieri is offline
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FRC #0254 (The Cheesy Poofs)
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Re: Is a shifting transmission really necessary?

Many people ask "Why should I have a shifting transmission?"

A better question may be "Why not?!"

I see many advantages in having a shifting transmission. Most of the technical aspects from the mechanical side have been covered, so I will give my pros and cons from a programmers perspective.

Reason 1: Having a shifting transmission and a well written program will enable your robot to be "smart" For example, lets say it is autonomous mode. Under normal conditions in high gear, the drive motors draw 'X' amount of current, and output a corresponding 'Y' amount of speed. Your robot collides with another robot and a pushing match begins. Your program senses that the amount of current going to the motors has increased, and the speed has decreased. (A considerable amount) Your robot could then know to shift to low gear and beat out the other robot. And for what I know of the mechanical aspect of this situation (probably not much), by going to a lower gear you can output more torque while drawing the same amount of current.

Reason 2: Creating an option to shift also creates another form of control. Whether this is controlled by the drivers or the robot is entirely up to you. Don't be quick to jump the gun and assume that drivers always have to control your shifting transmission. We have the resources in our KOP to create an "automatic" manual transmission (a manual transmission that is shifted by the computer) I believe team 33 did this last year, but i may be wrong. This can give you a good advantage, and your robot will deliver speed and power when needed, respectively. Now I'm sure there is some way of achieving the same goal with a 1 speed transmission, but most people (like me) just dont know how and will default to what they know, such as shifting transmissions for changes in power and speed.

Reason 3: Its sexy.