Quote:
Originally Posted by InfernoX14
Wow... that is an unbelievably fast lifter. Very impressive.
However, those platforms are a bit flimsy (or at least the supports are), so robots seem to slide around on them.
Do you have any sort of grip tape or something in them?
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First of all, thanks. Second, I can assure you that the platforms themserves are far from flimsy - they are extremely strong and rigid pvc foam-core composite panels capable of supporting far above the weight of a robot. The "flimsy-ness" you see is the robot rocking gently because of the momentum from the lift. It didn't detract from the strength of our lift at all; it is attributed to an intentional slight tolerance we left between the reverse-mounted gas springs and their housings.
As far as robots sliding around, that is due to the robot wheels rolling and not the "slippery-ness" of the panels. Adding griptape would not have done anything really seeing as how there was no actual sliding occurring.
Our design for keeping robots on was to have the front two gas springs deploy bit earlier to allow the other robots to roll back against a 3" tall rail that ran along the back of each panel. This served to locate each robot we would lift and in no way compromised our lift or made it unstable.
The few instances (1 or 2?) you witnessed a robot roll of were because we had to perform a buzzer lift and our alliance teammates would still be attempting to locate their robot as we lifted. When power was cut, our robot would continue to lift - thanks in large part to the buzzer lift capabilities of the gas springs - however, other robots would lose power to the drivetarin and in one instance that happened when they were still locating themselves and, unfortunately, they rolled off.
Thanks for your questions, I hope I was able to answer them sufficiently. If you have any more, please feel free to ask
