pic: Team 2980 Open Source Robot

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

This looks neat. Are you building this for 2013, or as an off season thing?

I'm a little confused as to why there is both a tri-wheel and articulating system. Don't they both accomplish the same thing?

This is part of their 2013 climbing mechanism. If I understand correctly, the wheels ride on either side of the corner pipe, allowing the robot to "drive" up it. The tri-wheels are used to get over the rung vertices sticking out. If you look at the geometry of how tri-wheels work, a suspension system is necessary to keep the wheel(s) in contact with the driving surface at the same distance apart during the transition.