Cool new ideas for FIRST Robots - who has them?

[Hunter]

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

i got to get a picture because i know you people will love it. on our arm to extend it we used a simple cable and pulley system. the catch is that the cable was this special toothed cable (looks like a normal cable but with a second cable kind of spiraling up the length of it) that fit perfectly into toothed pulleys. the benefit you ask. absolutely no slippage so instead of a bulky pneumatic setup or motor rig we had this thin cable. it worked beautifully.

That sounds like synchromesh cable which is available from SDP-SI http://sdp-si.com

[mechanicalbrain]

yeah this is exactly what we used. it works like this.

[sanddrag]

Now that is some cool stuff. I had never seen it before. What keeps the black cord from unraveling and how much load can this stuff take? How is the black cord attached to the silver cord?

[mechanicalbrain]

the silver and black cord are bound together and coated with a clear plastic. they can hold alot of force but slack is REALLY bad its alot easier for the cord to come out of the pully then to put it back in. if their is no slack then your fine becuase its really a metal cable and really works smoothly with the pulley

[santosh]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Could you elaborate on that a little? Do you have a picture?

I don't have a picture. But this is how it worked. We built 4 drive modules that fit inside of our robot and could easily slide in and out of the fram of the bot.

The modules were all conected to a central point by hinging peices of metal together. There was one piston that ran up the center of out robot. When that piston expanded, it pushed on the central point causing the peices of metal to hinge outwards and expand the overall lenght of the 2 pieces connected to each other. Each module had its own 2 piece of metal that were hinged together that met up at a certain point. So when the piston pushed down, the drive module were pushe out of the fram of the bot.

Forgive me if the explanation is bad. I am too tired to think properly.

[mechanicalbrain]

i want to see what people did with electronics. we realized the control board and the power board were the exact same size and mounted them back to back. we also mounted neon tubes to the bottom of the bot and used a nylon mesh tubing that is used in PCs to bind our electrical..... oh yeah and used magnetic limit switches to determine the exact angle of our arm (im thinking of trying a potentiometer for next year but i think the magnets are more reliable).

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Instead of "who has them" I should have said "post them"

I don't really care who has them, I just care about the ideas themselves.

LOL! remember my "soap box" thread about clear and concise titles?

I personally have worked on this idea for a while- ever since I saw the 3 wheeled omni directional bot. I have been thinking, and I thought of a way to give the drivetrain pushing power- this has been the key problem in this design. All that I need is a game that would support the idea.

And also- The design is very secret... so I may not share it until it has been tested.

[Karthik1]

I have a cool idea its basically holonomic with treads. Think omni treads.

Something ...... like this

[mechanicalbrain]

Santosh and i have been on IM allot and have been throwing around a cool design (among other cool ideas) for a treaded crab drive. I'm keeping the details to myself Santosh can share if he wants but its nice!

[Wetzel]

My A&P and other bio and life science classes have given me several interesting ideas.

Wetzel

[Jizvonius]

Originally Posted by Karthik1

I have a cool idea its basically holonomic with treads. Think omni treads.

Nice, the circuitrunners were considering that, but not only omni-treads, but also...TREAD-OMNIS.

Hope that was forboding enough. We thought, we can put rollers on a tread, or replace the rollers on an omniwheel with treads thus creating something that resembles a barrel made of treads. you could drive a robot with one of these if you wanted, but two would give you tank treads and traction in on direction, and omni-wheel drive and traction in the other. The weight and complexity of the design that i came up with made it very impractical, but it was still very cool.

[cbudrecki]

here's something that I thought of last night... I don't really think it'd be possible, and if it were, the programming would be an absolute nightmare but anyway... instead of joystick controls, have the robot navigate by coordinates that correspond to a computer drawing tablet( that could easily be painted or marked to match the field) and the robot would be moving in relation to the stylus. a step up would to even use a mini-mouse (with my thoughts, wireless would be best) instead of the stylus and then the buttons on the mouse could be used for robot functions, and here's where the wireless would come in handy, to make steering easier, make the robot rotate in conjuction with the mouse (front of mouse = front of robot) obviously, some type of omnidrive system(crab, macadam, or otherwise) would be ideal.

Again, probably would never be possible, and if it were, it'd prob. take years to program, but wouldn't it be neat?!?

[KenWittlief]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

My A&P and other bio and life science classes have given me several interesting ideas.

Wetzel

Whats the term for copying living organisms - copying the way living things accomplish a task?

biomimicry?

[mechanicalbrain]

Yes. Why what creature were you planning on mimicing?