HUMINOID ROBOTS

[Billfred]

Looking at the YouTube video embedded in the link, I am quite impressed with the agility of those robots. I don't know if they'd scale to FRC size, since the nature of FRC games have favored manipulators skilled at one (or two at most) things, but they do seem to fit roughly within the scale of FIRST Tech Challenge (which, as we've all heard, is in search of other platforms).

(That's not to say that it fits best as FTC's new platform; the RoboNova seen in the video is $999 and doesn't seem to offer much in the way of construction creativity. Still, it might offer some ideas to others.)

[joeweber]

I also was amazed at the abilitys of the small robots, but my though is to design a robot arm for FRC that closely matches (not exactly) the movement of the hands and arms of humans. You than could build a harnes that you could strap on your own body to control it. Think of the last game, as you reach out, grab lift and install the tubes on the rack the robot would mimic it exactly and do the same. This would greatly improve contol and send FRC to the next level. A two finger hand with a thumb using cables to close is not that hard to build. The problem with comtroling the wrist and arms is the limits of the motors we have to use.