Wheels, treads...

[EStokely]

Think outside the box.

I agree hovercrafts would be cool but....

Lets say wheels and treads are outlawed. Walking robots would become the norm, or would they?
What about a robot that rolls. like that Jimmy Neutron toy at Radio Shack. the whole exterior of the robot is the transport.
Its as useful as the hovercraft idea and use s much less battery power to run.

Or a jumping robot....

Or a snake drive....

you say water, who says it would be liquid? A skating robot.

Well that was fun
Eric

[EddieMcD]

Yes, but the ice thing would be hell for most teams to build a practice field with.

Anyhow, a walking robot wouldn't be that difficult. Just look at Wyachi from Battlebots.

[E. The Kidd]

Anyhow, a walking robot wouldn't be that difficult. Just look at Wyachi from Battlebots.

Whyachi uses wheels. Besides walking robots are very very slow

[Stephanie]

my best friend is of the opinion that we should build a hover craft, even if wheels and treads *aren't* outlawed
sounds fun, huh?
true, it might be hard to get enough lift for a 130 lb bot...

[Matt Leese]

Originally posted by Stephanie
my best friend is of the opinion that we should build a hover craft, even if wheels and treads *aren't* outlawed
sounds fun, huh?
true, it might be hard to get enough lift for a 130 lb bot...

Hate to burst your bubble, but it's been done. Back in '97 (I believe that was the year), a team (I believe it was the MIT team but I could be wrong) built a hovercraft. It couldn't do anything but float around as a hovercraft. So FIRST used it for the placebo (then it was 1v1v1 but they couldn't always field 3 teams so sometimes there was a "placebo" that really didn't do anything) that year. I personally didn't see it but I've heard good things about it.

Matt

[BSMFIRST]

Originally posted by team 713


Whyachi uses wheels. Besides walking robots are very very slow

Defining exactly what is and isn't a walking robot is pretty tough as BattleBots has found out. The Season 3.0 Whyachi bots and some others found a clever way to make walking robots that were just as fast and powerful as wheeled bots.

The Season 3.0 Whyachi's used a clever cam mechanism that allowed the robot to travel very fast (they were running at 25% of top speed on TV) and was almost indistinguisable from wheeled movement. By doing this they got a huge weight bonus which really helped out their robots. These walking mechanisms are now outlawed and walkers get a small weight bonus now.

For Season 4.0 all four of their bots were wheeled; Son of Whyachi, which used to be a HW, was brought into the SHW class and isn't technically a walker anymore.

Dan

[BSMFIRST]

Originally posted by Stephanie
my best friend is of the opinion that we should build a hover craft, even if wheels and treads *aren't* outlawed
sounds fun, huh?
true, it might be hard to get enough lift for a 130 lb bot...

Getting lift on the hovercraft isn't hard, I'm sure a drill motor or two could do it (albeit not terribly high.) Getting *thrust* is super hard, and going fast in a small space or having any sort of control is much harder.

Watching a FIRST game with hovercrafts would be pretty boring I think.

Dan

[Mike Soukup]

Originally posted by Matt Leese
Hate to burst your bubble, but it's been done. Back in '97 (I believe that was the year)

It was '96

[Chris Hibner]

Last year at nationals, some members of our team built a hovercraft in our pits out of spare kit parts and 4 model airplane propllers. I believe we did it with 4 Fischer-Price motors. It worked fairly well. It only took a couple of hours to build.