pic: Rice 870 Robot

[Toolman]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Overall, it looks like a very lightweight design. While I haven't seen it in action, I am impressed. I'm just curious though, why the large heavy wheels/tires?

The 870 bot w/out the battery weighed in at 115.7lbs.
The pneumatic tires were the heaviest individual parts of the bot weighing in at appx 7lbs each. This helped to distribute the low center of gravity for the bot.

The transmissions from first were weight reduced and the main drive gear was changed to a smaller # of teeth still using the 4 cims as a power source.
these combined features allowed for a very fast and VERY powerful drive and maneuvering system when needed.

We only needed to use the brute force in two matches for the 3 days. one match was when we scored the highest for the entire event. The other was in one of the final rounds to control the opposing robot.

The low center of gravity was great we never came close to falling over.
However just for giggles we demonstrated we were self righting from any direction if needed. (we wanted to be able to do this because we were knocked out in the semi-finals last year with our Scorpion robot).

As a result of the overall design Team 527 made a great choice to pick our team for their alliance partner. We are a very strong offensive/Defensive bot.

Team Leader
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