Effective Drive Base

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

Sir, you should perhaps examine the official field drawings for the bumps that will be on the field. The chamfer on the rib that supports the bump happens to be 10 1/4 high and 10 1/4 wide. Simple trigonometry tells me that the bumps FIRST is going to be building will be at an angle of 45 degrees.

Thanks, Kevin... before I read your post I was thinking... "NOOoooo... we didn't screw up when we built 45 degree angle bumps... did we?", and actually went and re-downloaded the drawings to check.

I've attached the relevant image here.

45 degrees is correct... and wow... it sure looks scarier in person when you see an actual bump first hand than it does when you look at the drawings.

On a seperate note, a student drew up some drawings very much like Madison's this afternoon... and while I don't think ground clearance will be an issue, so long as teams plan for it, CoG is certainly going to be.

After watching teams like 254 climb the ramp, drive sideways across the ramp, basically jump off the ramp and show off what a low CoG can do in Aim High, however, I'm pretty convinced that we can build an even lower CoG for this game. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those old Aim High robots have already made it over the bump....

I think the really maneuverable robots this year will not only be able to "get air" off the ramp, but to climb a flight of stairs.

Jason

Edit: And as for making a 4wd robot with big wheels turn... AndyMark might be able to help out a bit http://www.andymark.biz/am-0104.html