[Drivencrazy]

Team 1730 used a double roller design.

Initially we had just one top roller. Our top roller was a powered roller with radiator tube functioning as the actual contacting surface. We found that when we zero-degree turned or drove sideways (crab drive) too fast we would lose the ball because the normal force of the ground was too great and caused the balls to roll to the outside of the robot.

To fix this we added a bottom roller.

We used a non-powered bottom roller. The roller itself was an idler roller for a conveyor belt. We mounted the roller on a hinge so that we were able to clear the bump. The mounting bracket for the roller had plastic sliders attached that rode along the floor. The roller applied an upward force on the ball to dramatically lessen the normal force of the ground.

The added roller gave us much more maneuverability when we had a ball and were then able to maximize our scoring potential.