Robot Drag Racing

[hipsterjr]

Since this year's game is NASCAR style, I thought the idea of robot drag racing would be a neat idea to kick around. With every one talking about their 18-25 Ft/sec drive-trains , it would be cool to actually see who has the best hot rod bot at scrimmages and post season events.
Are there any car nuts who share my speed driven curiosity?

Originally Posted by hipsterjr

Since this year's game is NASCAR style, I thought the idea of robot drag racing would be a neat idea to kick around. With every one talking about their 18-25 Ft/sec drive-trains , it would be cool to actually see who has the best hot rod bot at scrimmages and post season events.
Are there any car nuts who share my speed driven curiosity?

That would be fun.

::begins CADing an alternate gearset for Drag competitions::

[thefro526]

Sounds cool; the only problem is that you'd run out of carpet really fast at those speeds.

[synth3tk]

Originally Posted by thefro526

Sounds cool; the only problem is that you'd run out of carpet really fast at those speeds.

Not if you have the right type of venue. We aren't talking about competition-sized fields here. After the competitions, it's all whatever we want. Somebody get one going somewhere, and I'm sure we'd love to do it.

[Josh Goodman]

I don't know if all of the carpets do. But I know our carpet splits into two sides. If, instead of putting them next to each other, for the field, you put them length wise, it would be much farther!

I don't know about radio range though.

[blaxbb]

who is willing to throw down the pinks

[hipsterjr]

Originally Posted by blaxbb

who is willing to throw down the pinks

Might want to watch how you say that around 233 I think 75 -100ft would be a good distance.

[MrForbes]

F = M a

How long will it take your robot to reach top speed? that's what drag racing is all about....

[bduddy]

Why drag racing-why not just a race? 50 laps, pit stops to change batteries are allowed

[Qbranch]

Originally Posted by Josh Goodman

I don't know about radio range though.

Well, it might work if you mounted the radios in a 'candelabra' half way down the field on a tripod like at regionals... maybe...

then again the radios have trouble working 15 ft away let alone 50. Try some MaxStream ZigBee radios. That should do the trick.

Hmm... in the 40' sprint I put good money on our robot... auto shifter...

Then again, it wouldn't really be that exciting of a race, since most teams have a maximum of four CIMs in their transmission it would come down to who's geared their robots to the sweetest points on the CIMs power curves, unless someone made a gearbox that allowed some banebots/FP motors to contribute torque as well, or made their robot less than 120lb.

-q

[Grogs]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Why drag racing-why not just a race? 50 laps, pit stops to change batteries are allowed

yea...that sounds cool, but instead of tank steering, we'd need to use regular car steering

[RJohnston]

We have a different steering solution. Gyro stablized heading correction. We set a heading and the robot always drives straight on it, hands off of the controls. Of course, we only get about 9fps out of our bot, but we could of course drive straight at ridiculous speeds given that the gyros are good for 80 degrees/sec. Maybe we could toast some of these "Turbo Bots" as they run out of control off the track.

Also, our radios seem to have a range of at least 80 feet or more in our hallways.