Team 2980 2013 Open Source Robot

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by eedoga

Hey Nuttyman,

SO...the tri-wheels were a sort of...all or nothing sort of idea. The kids made something out of legos...but as for a genuine prototype I don't think they did anything. I'm sort of hoping they got it right. They modeled it in inventor and are going to town building it/ordering parts...At this point it might be a suicide mission where they end up with no robot. I'm sort of hoping that isn't the case. In the least the idea is that they will keep fixing/figiting until it works.

As for the transition...I'm not sure the kids have figured that one out either. The original idea was to just ram into the pole...There is an arm mechanism that mounts on the top and folds down which they will probably end up using, and they are planning on having the tri-wheels whirring away as they drive into the pole. Worst case they are going to mount a teflon-V in the center square to slide onto pole.

Absolute worst case situation the kids will add a pusher to the back to help tilt the robot up.

great...now I'm worried.

Edoga

Lego prototypes are often sufficient, and any prototype is better than nothing. most of your weight is centered around the bar or below, so you shouldn't be dealing a large torque trying to pry your robot off the bar.

As far as getting on to the bar, if driving up it with the tri-wheels spinning doesn't work, I could see a wheelie-bar linkage or two (Like 33's stinger last year) that just props the front of the robot up on omnis and drives on the rear wheels towards the bar. You've got plenty of space on the top of the robot if you need it.


All-or-nothing designs are not inherently a bad thing, and neither is letting the students try and fail. If they're excited about it, that's what matters. If it works, they've really accomplished something. If it doesn't, failure is a very good lesson if you analyze what happened. As long as they learn something either way, it's a successful exercise. Some of my most memorable design lessons came from things that DIDN'T work in FRC (ie don't use set screws instead of keys on a CIM shaft to transmit torque to your drivetrain).

What's your estimated weight at? With all these 5-gallon bucket, pneumatic fed, small wheel banebots shooters we're seeing here on CD, I wouldn't be surprised if you could fab one of those quickly and slap it on top of the robot for a quick HP load 2 or 3pt shooter. If I recall correctly, Discotechs 1099 had a video on youtube where they used the kit-channel as shooter guide rails with great success. Just some food for thought, if you've got the weight I'm not convinced this has to be an all-or-nothing design.