Powered Robot Carts

[Racer26]

How many teams have built, or plan on building a self-powered cart?

I have seen these at regionals before, and 1075 has built one in our infinite amounts of spare time ( ).

It is absolutely our favorite new toy. It travels at about walking pace running wide open throttle, and carries our robot and its driver no sweat.

Its also useful for things OTHER than moving the robot.

For testing we had to move a bunch of tables and books, so we loaded them up and drove through the halls of the school.

Before anyone says it, yes, safety with such a device is paramount, and we fully plan to have several students assigned to accompanying it through the pits as "safety crew", to prevent accidental robocart->human contact, by alerting people in the vicinity.

It also has a number of safety interlocks to prevent inadvertent driving, and inadvertent moving of the forks, such that in the event it is left on with nobody on it, it does not move should the joystick be accidentally nudged. It is also equipped with the ever popular revolving light from pre-2004 seasons to provide a visual warning that it is turned on, and should be treated with caution. Furthermore, it has pneumatic locks to prevent the robot from unexpectedly falling off of it, and potentially crushing toes.

I was just curious if the few of these we've seen before are growing in popularity.