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.

[octothorpe]

That sounds very cool. Do you have a picture of it? I like the idea of a warning light and a clamp-on robot securing system.

Our cart still relies on the sweat and tears of the drive team to haul it from place to place

To quote the ever present internet phrase: pics or it didn't happen.

But anywhoo, my old team looked at doing that... and decided it's already stressful enough to keep the robot battery live, adding another battery to that would make competitions even more tough.

[Blue_Mist]

Originally Posted by octothorpe

That sounds very cool. Do you have a picture of it? I like the idea of a warning light and a clamp-on robot securing system.

Our cart still relies on the sweat and tears of the drive team to haul it from place to place

You forgot the blood! I can't count the number of times that I or a team member have scraped or cut ourselves on robot or cart, especially since the 2007 robot had an off-board compressor. Someone built a simple shelf to hold the box so it could charge the robot while the robot was being hauled from Pit to Arena. Fine, except that the shelf dual functions as a razorblade when the compressor box isn't on it.

Now that you mention it, our cart should have warning lights to warn people away.

[Racer26]

We'll get some pics up eventually, once it doesn't look like a big heap of steel welded to an electric wheelchair with some IFI electronics stuck on.

To avoid the battery issue its got twin big 12V batteries in parallel (sorry, I don't know the specs on them, but each one is about 4x the size of the KOP batteries), hooked up to an onboard charger which will (hopefully) have a spring loaded spool of wire attached, allowing us a retractable charging cable, much like your electric vaccuum cleaner at home. We drove it probably a total of about 22,000 ft this past weekend without charging it, and the batteries only lost about 0.2V under load. I was thoroughly impressed.

EDIT: Also, I think we will likely bring our trusty man-powered cart with us, since we CAN run with it to make those last minute matches, and our motorized cart can't go faster than a brisk walk.

[octothorpe]

Originally Posted by CraigHickman

But anywhoo, my old team looked at doing that... and decided it's already stressful enough to keep the robot battery live, adding another battery to that would make competitions even more tough.

Nuclear powered robot cart, anyone?

Originally Posted by Blue_Mist

You forgot the blood! I can't count the number of times that I or a team member have scraped or cut ourselves on robot or cart, especially since the 2007 robot had an off-board compressor. Someone built a simple shelf to hold the box so it could charge the robot while the robot was being hauled from Pit to Arena. Fine, except that the shelf dual functions as a razorblade when the compressor box isn't on it.

I think the blood was mostly from the robot, either lifting it on or off the cart. Simply pushing the cart was not, as I observed, a lethal activity. Was anyone really de-ankled by the compressor box shelf?

[TubaMorg]

Some of our kids built a cool motorized cart. They put it on the chassis of an old robot. It even has a pneumatic ramp to dump the robot on the ground. We use older batteries so no worries about draining our competition batteries.

[Racer26]

There may well be 3 or 4 more safety features added to our cart before it sees a competition, in light of some past discussion of powered carts.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Looks like you guys have done a good job of focusing on the safety considerations of having a powered cart in a crowded event. That's a really good thing to see!

[IndySam]

Please be kind to your queuing staff. If you have a powered cart it must be able to be quickly and easily moved by someone other than your team.

I have seen carts that team members have put a lot of work into have to be put back into the truck because they were just too much of a pain for the field staff to move around.

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by IndySam

Please be kind to your queuing staff. If you have a powered cart it must be able to be quickly and easily moved by someone other than your team.

I have seen carts that team members have put a lot of work into have to be put back into the truck because they were just too much of a pain for the field staff to move around.

I don't foresee this being a problem as it is built on a wheelchair base. The wheelchairs motors have a simple lever that disengages the wheel, and it can easily be pushed. I will remind the team tonite that we should leave access to these levers open. In its former usage, this was so it could still be used like a traditional wheelchair, should the batteries die.

[R.C.]

pictures?

[synth3tk]

Our cart is powered by two trained pigeons and a glazed Krispy Kreme donut.

The ROBOT cart is a fusion of last year's fail'd cart plus last year's fail'd robot to make an awesome looking cart. Functionality is optional. I just finished putting in eight 12" cathodes around the chassis. Next on the list is to create access to the electronics, build the driver's mount, program the cart, and (after reading this thread) make sure it is non-powered capable.

It doesn't have all the safety features that you include, but we will have the rotating light and install a small siren (adjustable, of course) to warn people. Also, the cathodes are connected to a single Vic, which can be programmed to flash different patterns on command. That was random...

[Racer26]

All of our safety features have stemmed from having been at FIRST competitions for 5 years running, and knowing just how downright anal they can be about safety (there are many things they argue are unsafe that when done properly are totally safe).

Also, we've seen a few of these robo-cart's before, and figured there was loads of ways we could build in safety features, just to please FIRST, and ensure they let us USE the cart.

Personally, I'm all for being Darwinian. If you're stupid enough to get yourself killed, or otherwise removed from the gene pool by not paying attention, or just general stupidity, the world has been made a better place. Natural Selection trumps warning labels in my books.

[1502]

Originally Posted by 1075guy

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.

We're working on our second motorized one currently. The first was a wheelchair cut in halve, with all its origional electronics/portable programmer. Plus some cold cathodes, leds, a Xenon headlight and a dual scissor lift. Oh, almost forgot the spinners

Our cart team decided to make a second to A) test out mecanum drive and B) increase manuverability. Yes this means it will use mecanums. Yes we tested for wire looms. And yes, it works. So I wonder, what else could we add to the second considering were keeping the first?