paper: 2014 HOT Tech Notes

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Adam Freeman

Never thought about it that way. I would guess no, since the entire upper structure tubing was mounted through the chassis so I doubt there was much flex in the drivetrain. We had an issue during the build season where the claw was misaligned to the frame....it was almost impossible to flex the frame and upper structure to straighten it. We had to seperate components to get any movement.

But, anything is possible we've never looked at a corner to corner stiffness in the vertical direction.

My honest opinion is that we put ourselves in bad positions during the match which lead to a lot of easy t-bones for the defense.

This past weekend, I got a chance to work with 16 as our partner at OZARK during eliminations. I took notice how easy it was for their swerve to just move away from a t-bone and drive away.
Even though we practiced a lot with 368, I never took notice because it wasnt a full field of robots and with defense from multiple robots.
Swerve is another direction we might move towards, as we tinker with drivetrain setups during the off-season. We already built a swerve back in 2009 but never implemented it into a real design for an FRC challenge.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by waialua359

This past weekend, I got a chance to work with 16 as our partner at OZARK during eliminations. I took notice how easy it was for their swerve to just move away from a t-bone and drive away.
Even though we practiced a lot with 368, I never took notice because it wasnt a full field of robots and with defense from multiple robots.
Swerve is another direction we might move towards, as we tinker with drivetrain setups during the off-season. We already built a swerve back in 2009 but never implemented it into a real design for an FRC challenge.

As you may have noticed watching "6" a lot of that is drive practice too. JT knows that robot really well and controlling it is almost second nature.

[RonnieS]

This might not make a difference at all, but maybe so. When I find myself in a pin, I always shift into low and turn into them. It may all be in my head but every time I have tried turning away from the pinning robot, it seems as if my front wheels are on ice and my rear wheels are bolted to the ground. I really need to start testing these things aha. And it was a 6 WD WC set up using VP versa wheels.

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

This might not make a difference at all, but maybe so. When I find myself in a pin, I always shift into low and turn into them. It may all be in my head but every time I have tried turning away from the pinning robot, it seems as if my front wheels are on ice and my rear wheels are bolted to the ground. I really need to start testing these things aha. And it was a 6 WD WC set up using VP versa wheels.

One of our previous driver/turned mentor said the same thing. But, when we tested it out just picking a direction and driving, with no turning, produced the best results. This caused both machines to spin until someone slipped free. Although, there was no guarantee you would end up going the right direction once you got out of the pin. Anytime they stopped or changed direction it took twice as long to get free.