Team 166's robot

[Eric Finn]

We've designed a lightweight chassis and arm (supposed to be 90 pounds, I believe), and we've built a drivable chassis, and did some "testing" this Tuesday and Wednesday. I have a few videos of it driving on Wednesday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0XN6iSvCXo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_vUYyJAkCc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbluSr2Mf5Q

And, in case you were wondering, the drive code is very light, too.
Also, a team member should be getting a better video camera (it's actually a video camera, not a digital camera)

[overlord]

Simply amazing. I am curious to how it will turn and slide and all the rest of its zippee-de-doo-dahs when you have your arm on it.

[sanddrag]

Impressive. Thanks for sharing.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by overlord

Simply amazing. I am curious to how it will turn and slide and all the rest of its zippee-de-doo-dahs when you have your arm on it.

Based on the estimated weight Pro-E gave us, it will weight 15-20 pounds. That doesn't include fasteners and wiring. The hand and wrist weighs 5-10 pounds not including fasteners. So... I think it will actually run better because weight will be distributed more evenly.

We'll have a video when we're done with this robot.

[Chuck Glick]

Look's like a great robot, and man that thing hauls. big time. No fun for anyone trying to get around you or play D on you either. Simply Amazing.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by SirCharles982

Look's like a great robot, and man that thing hauls. big time. No fun for anyone trying to get around you or play D on you either. Simply Amazing.

Whoah, I like the amount of control you have over that thing. Seems much more precise than WPI's mecanum drive in 2005. Just from the point of a New Englander, how much pushing power do you get?

Can't wait to see the rest of it!

[Tim Delles]

Looks good, but is the arm going to turret. Seems like if you are in place to put a ring on and someone shoves you it is all over.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Tim Delles

Looks good, but is the arm going to turret. Seems like if you are in place to put a ring on and someone shoves you it is all over.

No turret. We intend to be quick enough to score before anyone can push out of the way. I don't know how well that will work, though.

If we can't score quick enough, then you are right, but if a team is playing some hard defense on us, they'll just push out of the range of the arm even with the turret.

Originally Posted by iCurtis

Whoah, I like the amount of control you have over that thing. Seems much more precise than WPI's mecanum drive in 2005. Just from the point of a New Englander, how much pushing power do you get?

Can't wait to see the rest of it!

Let me tell you. Neither can I.

[NextPerception]

oh crap another team beat me to it. a learning robot algorithm. automatically tunes your PIDs for you. i am guessing that that is what it is doing. why else would they have a masking tape grid on the floor

[Eric Finn]

Actually, no, we didn't. That masking tape is there from before I joined the team last year.
But I did make a motor calibration algorithm a week or so ago, but there's something wrong with another piece of code, so we're not getting encoder counts from the motors, except in a version of the code that has last year's camera code instead of this year's.

[Dan Petrovic]

Originally Posted by Eric Finn

Actually, no, we didn't. That masking tape is there from before I joined the team last year.
But I did make a motor calibration algorithm a week or so ago, but there's something wrong with another piece of code, so we're not getting encoder counts from the motors, except in a version of the code that has last year's camera code instead of this year's.

Actually... the masking tape was put on last year sort of late into the build season. You must not have seen the carpet before someone put it on.

[Rich Ross]

Not to nit-pick, but it appeared in the first link (video number 3) that that robot is actually Faster when it moves in a sideways direction. Is that right?

Interesting, very interesting.

[Alex.Norton]

When it comes to mechanums, the sideways translation speed compared to the forward speed is set by the angle of the rollers. It looks like they are using the Andymark mechanums (please correct me if I’m wrong here), which I think use 45-degree rollers. This would mean that all else being equal (motor bias and so on) the top sideways speed would equal the back ward and forward speed. This also means that the top speed when translating at 45 degrees to exactly forward or sideways would be 70% of the original top speed. This is the same for omnis; just that one must usually rotate the frame of reference 45 degrees.

The chassis looks amazing and looks like it drives very well. One thing I notice though is that it seems to drift when moving around. Is that an artifact of the movement or the controller?

[Barry Bonzack]

So what is the ft/sec on that thing? I'm guessing between 9 and 10. It is videos like these that make me want some of those wheels. AndyMark Advertisement!

[Charger_07]

Wow, that is one awesome robot. Good job.