Beware of R16 your robot design may be too big.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

That makes a HUGE difference; it's the difference between the back corners being tangent to an 80 inch diameter circle as I've assumed or being the center of an 80 inch radius arc.

I don't have access to CAD (nor am I any good at using it). However, I broke out my handy dandy pen, paper and google (as I left my trusty TI-84 at school), and tried to tackle the size difference. I am notoriously bad at trig, however, so I could be completely off base, becuase I did not get the answer I thought I'd get. I didn't keep track of my work, but essentially, I drew a rectangle inside an 80 inch diameter circle, with the corners being located on the circle. I assumed a fix robot width of 28 inches, and tried to find how far forward once could extend. The answer I got was 74.9ish inches total. Subtracting the robot length (assumed to be 38") this leaves you with about 37" to play with.

If you're extending that far out for any length of time with anything hefty, I can't imagine you'd be very stable.

Can someone else do the math to either confirm or (more likely) tell me I'm way out in left field? It seems to me that if the situation is dire enough to warrant a Thunderchicken bashing his head, then I've probably screwed up my math.