Tips for Robots in Parades

[nlknauss]

Our team was invited to participate in our town's 4th of July parade. We figure it would be a bright idea to have a decorated trailer and such but are wondering if any of you have tips for "parade rookies".

Is there anything we should be prepared with aside from having a bank of fully charged batteries and a place to plug in the driver's station?

Any and all comments or tips are helpful, I took a look around the forum and wasn't able to find one place with a list of tips for Robot Parade Marchers! There were a lot of great pictures to grab ideas from!

THANKS!

[AndyB]

• Be Safe
• Be prepared in case of rain (have plastic bags ready)
• If you are driving the robot on the ground, consider the damage to your wheels (omni wheels and asphalt don't mix, I wouldn't test rovers either)
• If you can, figure out a way to store two batteries within your robot. This makes battery changing even quicker.
• Kids love candy. Buttons wouldn't hurt either.

[youngWilliam14]

instead of plugging your driver station to a wall, i used to wire a 9v battery clip to an end cut off from a burnt out wall adapter when we'd take out a robot running the old IFI system. i don't remember off the top of my head what the new drivers station needs. look at the output rating on the wall adapter, or if you're like me, plug in the wall adapter and take a multimeter to it for the voltage and amperage ^.^

[ZInventor]

i've found that a few layers of duct tape on the wheels makes their traction better, as well as improving the wear / use ratio on asphalt. also, outside of competition, you can use any 12 volt battery (the system will run fine for hours on a 12V car batt)

t-shirt cannons plus candy = good (candycannon), mount it to the robot on a spike relay, and if you have pneumatics, interconnect them so that you can use the bot compressor

another option for power is to use a really (25+ feet) long wire plugged into the 12 volt outlet in a car (if you can drive a car behind the bot)

this year's drive station runs 12 volt. mk batteries work great for it (runs for days)

another thing to remeber: stop every once and a while and check crutial bolts / connectors, driving on the road causes alot of vibration, ans you don't want stuff falling out while you're driving.

should be fun no matter how you do it.

-Z

[nlknauss]

Originally Posted by AndyB

• If you can, figure out a way to store two batteries within your robot. This makes battery changing even quicker.

Originally Posted by ZInventor

you can use any 12 volt battery (the system will run fine for hours on a 12V car batt)
this year's drive station runs 12 volt. mk batteries work great for it (runs for days)
-Z

Thanks for the power advice so far, it seems to be the biggest factor aside from the wheels. Unfortunately, we don't have the option to really change the wheels out on our bot because this was a our rookie year. So we only have a few rover wheels in the library. We might try layering them (maybe with duct tape as suggested) for protection and traction.

We are definitely working on figuring out some sort of hand out, probably CANDY!!

Thanks again, keep them coming!

[JohnBoucher]

We ran Memorial Day Parade. Mostly uphill. Wear on tires minimal.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/34016

We elected not to drag the trailer around. Good thing especially since it was uphill. Wheels slipped badly on one section.

We borrow a generator that runs the driver station. Make sure you can run the robot and you have reset the WPA key. Very Important......

Test before you go.

Check that you can give out candy. Don't assume.

[DonRotolo]

Make a big-drum-style hanging strap or harness for your operator, so they aren't using their hands to carry the operator station. Anyone in band will know what I mean. The operator held the battery in a small backpack.

The duct tape is what we use, but start with a single layer of blue masking tape - otherwise getting the duct tape adhesive off the wheels is a chore. Have the operator avoid spinning the wheels or turning a real lot, as this scrubs off the tape.

You need a few kids to shag orbit balls as the robot plays with them - they inevitably try to roll away. Don't want to be giving those away...

2 or 3 batteries will get you through a parade.

Decorate the trailer, be sure people know exactly what they are seeing, and it wouldn't hurt to have a little "sponsors and mentors needed - come play robots with us" sign on there somewhere. The team should all be dressed alike.

We found the CIM motors get really hot after 15 minutes of continuous operation; it may be a good idea to mount some muffin fans so they cool them off a little. Duct tape, velcro, wire, whatever it takes to mount them.

Even though this is last: Safety First. Make sure the robot can be stopped before it accidentally hits a bystander. The ball handlers/candy-giver-outers should be aware and able.

Oh, have fun, hydrate, and sunscreen...

[Chris is me]

You can get away with using Rover Wheels on a parade robot just fine. That's what team 237 did. If you can I'd use the 2008 KoP over them, but if you can't not all is lost. Duct taping them doesn't sound like a bad idea just so you don't have to clean them at all.

You should need 2 or 3 batteries depending on how long the parade route is. See if you can take a quick glance over your robot while you do that, look for missing screws, loose plates, etc. while changing the battery.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by nlknauss

Unfortunately, we don't have the option to really change the wheels out on our bot because this was a our rookie year. So we only have a few rover wheels in the library.

http://www.andymark.biz/08firstwheel.html

I'd get a set of those, just for carpet-only practice--and for parades. They should fit where the rover wheels do with no extra hardware.

[kjhobin]

We have done parades fro a few years. We usually borrow a large trailer, decorate it like a float, and then demo a few robots on it. This allows us to set up field elements so people can actually see what we do with the robots. We also usually put netting up around some of the trailer to help keep game pieces from flying all over the place.

[Josh Fox]

Team RUSH's parade setup consists of a float towed behind a car that has the controls set up on it running off of an inverter from said car. The robot has either been run on top of the float, picking up tubes and such in 2007, or last year we took our overdrive bot and put pneumatic wheels on it, and ran it behind the float in the road! It's pretty awesome to see 40" diameter trackballs flying around the street

[nlknauss]

I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to post a final thank you before we participated in our town's 4th of July parade. All of your guidance certainly made it a successful experience for the team.

We ended up finding and decorating a trailer that was really only used incase of an emergency if the robot went down. The robot survived the entire parade with only one battery change. We wrapped the rover wheels with one layer of gorilla tape which ended up working really well on the asphalt and prevented a lot of wear and tear on the wheels. We really only have to clean off some of the glue residue left from the tape. The driver's station and wireless router were ran off a power-inverter plugged into the car pulling the trailer. The driver stood up through the sun roof of the car with the driver's station strapped down to the roof rack. We also had some "robot themed music" playing in the car. Good stuff!

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to throw candy or other handouts to the crowd for insurance reasons. But, the crowd was certainly impressed with the robot and the team. Certainly a great event for team exposure!

Thanks again for the input everyone provided on this. This will be a great thread for anyone in the future to reference if they decide to participate in a parade for the first time.

Here's one of the pictures that was taken of the event.

[Cow Bell Solo]

I know it is a little late, but I know when we did our homecoming parade last year, we had a mini van driving and had the OI pluged into a converter for the car, and had some either it was foldable chairs or something that the operators sat on and we had the controls on a small foldable table and they looked out the back of the van with the hatch open and it worked fine