Tips for Robots in Parades

[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