Team 2085 Design Questions

[jmarsh24]

This is our 3rd year participating in the competition and our robot is coming along rather nicely. Questions that are plaguing our team right now is on traction control... The team has decided to do a idler wheel with an encoder along with encoders on the gear boxes. But people are thinking we will get false readings if we are trying to turn and the idler wheel wont be giving the right values that we need. I was looking for the teams that have gotten their traction control to work, to see if they could help us out. We are thinking we might need 2 idler wheels perpendicular to each other, allowing us to get the vector speed between the 2 spinning... Any help would be great.

Secondly, we are looking to do an optical sensor to start our ground conveyor system. We are trying to figure out which sensor would be the best for this. The two we are going back and forth on are a laser trip sensor, or a light sensor, also if teams who have used sensors like these and know places that have good adaptable or reliable sensors would be awesome.

Thirdly, we are designing our conveyor system, and at the moment our conveyor belt is a solid piece, and we are looking to do urethane belting and are trying to design the grooves in the rollers. We have 1/4 inch orange mcmaster belting and are wondering what has been a good grove or groove shape that veteran teams have found successful. I will be posting pictures of our robot soon!