Static Buildup

[Phoenix Spud]

Originally Posted by Rafael Vasquez

For maneuverability purposes, the back two wheels on our robot are made from the same material that we were required to use last year for the wheels. Unfortunately, this gives us the same problem with static build up running on carpet. Last year we were able to use a linolium tiled room for practice, but this year we must use carpet as that will be the competition surface.

We're pretty sure that static buildup has fried one of our jaguars, and we're worried about the rest and especially our cRIO. Does anyone have any suggestions for eliminating the charge?

Our ideas so far:
dragging some chain or rope to transfer it to the ground (just for testing, not for competition)

hooking up a wire from the frame to the ground terminal on the battery (is this legal?)

It is illegal to ground your frame. (In fact, this is a big problem since the casing on the cRIO and camera are both grounded. You should use a multi meter to make sure this isn't happening.)

Last year there were a lot of team that had this problem. My team even saw static sparking it was so bad!!! I would recommend looking at threads from last year. One of the ideas that came up was having a wire running from the frame to the ground this should keep the robot from having a static charge.

Hope that helps!