pic: Unique drive concept

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Originally Posted by gburlison

We built a similar design for ZONE ZEAL (2002?). The biggest difference was that a pivot was not powered by a separate motor. There was a stop and the turn table would only turn 180 degrees and a potentiometer to read the rotation angle. The drive wheels were used to turn the pivot. We used 1 joystick tank drive and if you wanted to turn left, you would move the joystik to the left. the software would drive the right motor forward and the left motor backward until the potentiometer indicated that the turntable was pointing left. Of course forward would drive it forward and back would drive it backward. We used ball casters on the corners. I will see if I can find some pictures, but it was probably our worst design as a whole so it may take me awhile to dig them up.

I remember that robot and was going to mention something about it, yet I didn't know what team's robot it was. You're right, it wasn't very effective that year as powerful drives were needed and that design doesn't offer much in the way of power.