Hovercraft

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by smartkid

O.k. Our team has a policy where we keep our ideas to ourselves however I know that this has crossed other teams minds and so I'm just going to throw it out there. It comes down to who can build and control it better anyway...


Is it allowed?
Would it work?
Am I crazy?

First of all, crazy is relative. For instance, for the next six weeks my relatives think I'm crazy.

It could, possibly, work. I figure that with wheels your maximum pushing force will be about 9 lbs (150x.06). More, of course, when you're on the carpet at the edge of the playing field, which may become a factor.

With proper gearing and blades, it would be possible to generate at least a few pounds of thrust using the CIMs. The catch, of course, is that you will have to put a serious safety cage around your propellors.

You will also have to have your motors running at pretty much full blast the whole time you are playing, and will actively have to stop your robot, rather than just relying on wheel friction to bring it to a stop.

So while a hoverbot would be extremely cool, I suspect it would offer more disadvantages than advantages.

But perhaps, if you take the hovercraft idea and run it in reverse, you might come up with an idea to give you an edge. Let's just say... what if your hovercraft.... sucks?

Jason

P.S. R06 states that "robots MUST use rover wheels to provide traction", so perhaps the hoverbots aren't allowed unless they have a token roverwheel touching the ground at all times.