Advice for driving on ice?

[lundeby]

Thanks so much for all the experienced and expert advice. It seems like the key points are:

• mecanum = No!
• Normal wheels will probably work OK. Roughtop tread seems like it’s worth a try and we do have those wheels on hand.
• It’s ice! Controlled acceleration and turning will be vital. Skip trying to show any elaborate driving.

Originally Posted by smistthegreat

I would stay away from studs, as they maybe chew up the ice a little bit, which is not the most desirable outcome.

We will be on the ice during intermission so the ice will be resurfaced afterward. Regardless, it would be better manners to not be creating a mess. I do have some worry about leaving tie-wraps as trash. Again, resurfacing would likely pick them up but we need to be careful.

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

Few questions before I go on
Do you guys have access to a 3D printer?
Did the venue give you any information on rules you would need to follow?
Do you have a gyro?

We have access to a 3D printer but its sloooow.

The audition focus is to see how we drive on ice. We have not received any rules / expectations yet. They pack a lot of activity during these game intermissions so I suspect the concern is having the robot get stuck and taking time to get off the ice. Typically their dance team does some routine and the dancers and mascot toss / shoot t-shirts after. I’m guessing we’ll join that and get a PA mention. I’m sure we’ll be told clearly where and when the robot needs to run. They assign a handler to anyone performing to help ensure things go as they like.

We have a gyro and an accelerometer. I’m expecting we’ll be doing some special acceleration control programming next week. We switched from tank drive to mecanum on this robot to increase the show factor on gymnasium floors. The driving certainly has become part of the show.

Originally Posted by robochick1319

set up a solid wireless connection.

We can agree with this vital advice for anyone driving in these big public venues. At first we just naively ran with our standard ssid broadcast configuration. Duh! No surprise that there are *a lot* of smartphones willing to attempt to chit chat with any wifi device nearby. We've beefed up the wifi link and I expect to further improve it in the future. Practice can be misleading since the audience is not present. We got the OK to go to a big event and practice on the sidelines to learn more about dealing with all that rf noise.


For the curious, this is an early video of the robot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxL0ILY53rg

It has 8 t-shirt barrels with separate air tanks for each. We preset different pressures for hitting different levels in the stands.