Tell me more about the regolith coating.

[Cyberphil]

Can someone please post a video of just how slippery this stuff is. Not for me, necessarily, but for other teams and people. Maybe use another robot of yours, if you haven't already destroyed it. And if you can, use the Rover Wheels. That would be good for a lot of people. Thanks!

[ShadowNinja]

I can not post a video however it is a hard concept to imagine..we have regolith in one of our batroom walls...we moved the wheel across it and it seems the calculated friction the predicted is incorrect..with 130lb robots traveling at 10 mph with the coefficint of friction at .0021..it means u will drift 5-12 ft with a drastic turn...goodluck to anyone who can work around this issue...it is realy slippery...please try to practice this urself and then think of ideas...

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by Cyberphil

Can someone please post a video of just how slippery this stuff is. Not for me, necessarily, but for other teams and people. Maybe use another robot of yours, if you haven't already destroyed it. And if you can, use the Rover Wheels. That would be good for a lot of people. Thanks!

The field itself is not that slippery. What makes it slippery is the combination of the field and the wheels. They cant make the field to slippery because imagine what it would be like for Pilots carrying the robot on and off the field. We'd be slipping and falling constantly.

Joey

[xtraman122]

The bumps on the "regolith" make less of the surface area of the wheel contact it at once which decreases traction even more. It's not bad to walk on beause shoes are made of soft rubber, but we got a sheet of an almost identical product from Home Depot and it was unbelievable how little traction there was between it and the wheel. We couldn't find anything else that had such little traction paired with the wheel, the closest was some sort of hard granite looking tiling used in the cafeteria of my school which we may end up using as a practice area if we don't buy lots more of the plastic/fiberglass surface.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

The field itself is not that slippery. What makes it slippery is the combination of the field and the wheels. They cant make the field to slippery because imagine what it would be like for Pilots carrying the robot on and off the field. We'd be slipping and falling constantly.

Joey

The field wasn't slippery for walking on with the (dry) Vans sneakers I was wearing at Kickoff in Manchester for the official playing field, so I don't expect it to be an issue as long as you're not wearing high-heels to carry your robot on the field.

HOWEVER, be advised that when we went to pickup the kits, they had a sample of the field in FIRST HQ, and while my sneakers were the same, the snow we tracked inside made it MODERATELY slippery inside there on them material.

Bottom line is, as long as the field stays dry, & no one spills some soda or water on part of the field (or ruptures a compressor hose, and/or leaks some gear oil on the field) then it SHOULD be ok to walk on from a team member's standpoint most of the time.

Be cautions anyways, & always plan for safety first!

[Laaba 80]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

The field wasn't slippery for walking on with the (dry) Vans sneakers I was wearing at Kickoff in Manchester for the official playing field, so I don't expect it to be an issue as long as you're not wearing high-heels to carry your robot on the field.

HOWEVER, be advised that when we went to pickup the kits, they had a sample of the field in FIRST HQ, and while my sneakers were the same, the snow we tracked inside made it MODERATELY slippery inside there on them material.

Bottom line is, as long as the field stays dry, & no one spills some soda or water on part of the field (or ruptures a compressor hose, and/or leaks some gear oil on the field) then it SHOULD be ok to walk on from a team member's standpoint most of the time.

Be cautions anyways, & always plan for safety first!

Yeah my shoes were wet too. In order to see the field at kick off we needed, and living in WI, there is always snow and wet outside. I could tell that the slip was because of the mass amounts of wet shoes on the field, not the field itself.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

The field itself is not that slippery. What makes it slippery is the combination of the field and the wheels. They cant make the field to slippery because imagine what it would be like for Pilots carrying the robot on and off the field. We'd be slipping and falling constantly.

Joey

Well, I imagine drive teams will probably just slide their robots over to the gates this year, instead of wasting energy carrying it. We're goin' to the moon, it's all about efficiency (minus the millions of gallons of Kerosene and LOX we had to burn to get there)!

In all seriousness though, like Elgin said, this stuff isn't slippery to the sneakered foot.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

... In all seriousness though, like Elgin said, this stuff isn't slippery to the sneakered foot.

I just hope we don't see any drive team members, referees, emcees, or other volunteers wearing acetal-soled shoes this year. On second thought, maybe acetal soles would be appropriate for some emcees.

[catsylve]

Alright, now Richard, just because you are spending all of your time sliding around on the highways between Missouri and Michigan, doesn't mean we have to make our emcees into hockey pucks as well!