pic: FRC488 - Lifts Raised 1

[Madison]

Originally Posted by squirrel

That's really neat! do the unfinished details include something to keep robots from driving off the back or rolling back down the ramps?

There is a portion of each platform that sits on the prongs poking out toward the wall missing. There's no plan to include anything to stop folks from driving off the non-ramp side simply because our experimentation has shown that it's not necessary.

This video demonstrates how simple it is to drive up and stop on the platforms, I think. Shown is our 2006 robot, driven by a student with less than 10 minutes worth of experience driving. The robot starts approximately one-half of a field length away in a random orientation and our student was able to drive to the ramp and climb it in one try, taking less than 15 seconds.

A more experience driver should have no trouble with this and they wouldn't even need to worry about making a 90* turn during a match as our driver did here. I've been estimating that it'll take no more than ten seconds for our partners to situate themselves safely on our lifts. The platforms will raise no matter where their robot ends up as long as its center of gravity is somewhere over the lift.

If it turns out that teams are having some trouble with stopping in place, we'll park closer to the wall