pic: Introducing 190's M.O.H. Goat

[CD47-Bot]

loading photo ...

[WernerNYK]

"Look at him in all his majesty!"

Needless to say, we shall be turning a few heads at BAE

[Aaron Lussier]

Holy Stromboli Batman!!

190 does it again, awsome looking bot and I bet it works wonderfully. See you guys at BAE.

-Aaron

[Kyle Fenton]

Wow that is a nice job. Good job 190.
I had a hunch that you would make something like that

See you at BAE

[JVN]

Familiar.

Ken, watch your fingers!

[WernerNYK]

... as seen on the 5:30 evening news throughout New England on NECN

[Andy A.]

I've been trying to get details on 190's bot out of a friend of mine on the team for weeks. Nice to finally see what he's been up to.

-Andy A.

[ahecht]

For those of you with red-cyan glasses left over from looking at all the Mars images... 190 in 3D!

[Joe Johnson]

Thanks a lot. From your pictures, you've managed to make a liar out of me once again this year.

Every year, our students ask for this or that cool feature that I more or less tell the students is impossible due to the laws of physics.

Well... ...I am a liar again this year.

Looks like a very cool robot.

Good luck.

Joe J.

[Andy Baker]

That is one doozy of an arm. I assume that you guys are locking on to the pipe very well in order to keep yourself from swinging. This is very impressive.

Kudos to 190!

Andy B.

[Greg Perkins]

how do you guys do it?

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by Greg Perkins

how do you guys do it?

Lots and lots of caffeine. Plus a little magic.

[Glenn]

Cool Robot! You guys always come up with innovative designs can’t wait to see it person.

[WernerNYK]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

That is one doozy of an arm. I assume that you guys are locking on to the pipe very well in order to keep yourself from swinging. This is very impressive.

You would assume, wouldn't you Andy? Well we all know what happens when you assume...

For those interested, there is some video from NECN (New England Cable News) which came down and did a news story about us yesterday. There are some shots of us doing some of our things. It is here: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Academy...urces/NECN.wmv

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

That is one doozy of an arm. I assume that you guys are locking on to the pipe very well in order to keep yourself from swinging. This is very impressive.

Kudos to 190!

Andy B.

Andy, I think that the opposite is true. For the robot to operate optimally, you'd want for it to be free-swinging about the horizontal bar.

You can see that it's tilted away from vertical in that photo, also noting that the arm is at its full extension. Were it to grab a ball and rotate over the top, the rest of the chassis would act as a counterweight, swinging back to vertical and then away to other side, dynamically counteracting the torque exerted by the arm and ball around the horizontal bar.

It's an elegant solution to a reasonably complex problem. It's not the only solution, of course, but I'd say it's the best. It places the center of gravity in a place much lower than the horizontal bar, minimizing the chance for the robot to spin around or otherwise mess up its orientation to the Earth.