Robots Tipping Over

[Cory]

Originally Posted by squirrel

I've never understood putting all that effort into making the drive base as light as possible, when the effort would be more effective if applied to the mechanism. If that means rethinking the mechanism design to make it simpler but still effective, all the better.

I don't see why a team wouldn't do both.

I can't speak for anyone but 254, but every year it's our goal to make all systems as light as possible without expending what we judge to be an unreasonable amount of effort, or sacrificing functionality/robustness.

At best this nets us more weight for added functionality, or wiggle room for when we get to the events and decide there's something we really want to add to the robot (Or allows us to slap 10-20 lbs of dead weight onto the base of the robot). At worst it means we don't go overweight.

It's a no brainer for us. Any weight we save from the base is weight we can use somewhere else. Just because it's no longer in the base does not mean it will negatively effect our center of mass. Smart design dictates no matter how heavy or light your robot is, you don't put the weight up high.