Team 2175 Driving!

[Aren Siekmeier]

We're driving! http://vimeo.com/19562627.

This is an implentation of what is called "Slide Drive". We have five 4" omni wheels (doubled up for better floor contact), 4 of which are in typical tank drive arrangement and the last in the middle pointed sideways. This drive train has 3 degrees of freedom (fwd/back, strafe, rotate) and is pretty fast and maneuverable while staying pretty simple. Even over the course of this video we are getting a hang of some of the cool nuances of this thing, and we hope to have regular drive practice to really get at moving around. Read more about it at our blog.

This is always a major achievement, but we still have a ways to go before we have a competitive machine. Gripper, elevator, and minibot all need to be finalized and built.