[Ben Piecuch]

I'll answer some technical questions here.

It is a direct drive, 4 motor drive train. We thought it would be a little too fast and difficult to control, but the speed definitely worked for us after a little practice. We were clicking off the clutches in some turns, but we're not going to change it.

To tractor the balls off the ground, we used the small wheels to roll the balls around a curved backplate. Balls then rolled into an upper hopper, which could hold 4 balls. Two more balls could be held in the two independently driven rollers, for a total of 6. We would dump 4 at a time into the high goal, then re-load the other two balls and immediately re-dump.

The upper hopper is lifted with with 2 motors, and uses a continuous chain arrangement to power it up and down. We doubled up the chain to increase its strength. IFI's linear slides are used to achieve the smooth movement.

Our ground clearance is 1.5", which easily gets us on to the platform. Though, we don't hang (yet...) Our strategy is focused on scoring balls in the high goal and gaining control of the atlas ball.

Feel free to ask more questions. Hopefully, we'll have more pictures up on our website soon.

BEN