FRC488 Driving Over the Bump

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by =Martin=Taylor=

Wow. That’s really scary. I'm surprised so many people are planning to 'brute force' the bump like that. Even if your CG never goes outside the footprint the sheer momentum of your robot pitching forward may be enough to tip it.

If you left larger gaps between the wheels the transition would be smoother.

Sure, but with practice, the drivers can really get comfortable with it and do it relatively well every time. We must have done it similar to 488 over 30+ times daily with no problems yet.
Adding a little traction control can help things a little also.

[MrForbes]

We got ours going over the bump after some weight redistribution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NGVs1QOPGQ

[dtengineering]

Has anyone considered putting rubber grommets around their axles where they mount to the frame to reduce impact forces slightly? They'd have to be pretty stiff to keep the chains from coming off, but 1/8" of "give" on a high impact would be a good step towards shock reduction.

Jason

Edit: "Brute force the bump?".... YEAH!! I want to see robots get air off those things! There's going to be more than one team who drives over them at high speed just for fun! I'm going to watch some old Dukes of Hazzard reruns for inspiration!

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Has anyone considered putting rubber grommets around their axles where they mount to the frame to reduce impact forces slightly? They'd have to be pretty stiff to keep the chains from coming off, but 1/8" of "give" on a high impact would be a good step towards shock reduction.

I guess that depends on how your axles work, ours are welded to the frame (cantilevered dead axles) so that might not work. We could make part of the frame support the drivetrain, and have it isolated from the rest of the frame.

Might be easier than trying to convince the driver to slow down for the speed bump