pic: Team 971's Robot

[=Martin=Taylor=]

Does it bother you that this will be the first year (in quite some time) that 254/968 has decided NOT to use this design?

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Hachiban VIII

Does it bother you that this will be the first year (in quite some time) that 254/968 has decided NOT to use this design?

Give credit where it is due; this design was developed by team 60 in 2000 (hints of it) and fully in 2001. They used it in '04 with 254 and in '05. 22,254 and 968 (seperate from 22 and 254 i believe) used it in '05 as well.

Just out of curiousity... How did you come about this design?

My team used it this year halfway based on drawings from when we did it in 2004.

[AustinSchuh]

I am not worried. This design may not be the best one out there, but it definately works well. They believe that they have a better design than the arm, and I want to see what they think is any better. If we get time, I want to write some code that changes the control from changing the angle of the joints to changing the position in the xy plane of the arm. I believe that they didn't like the way that the arm is not able to lift in a strait line without a very skilled driver.

[AustinSchuh]

We started fully from scratch this year. It took me 2 days to draw the claw, and then another day to draw the entire arm. The arm gearboxes then took another ~2 days. I frequented team254.bcp.org often, but only used their design as inspiration, not something to dirrectly copy. We went over to 254's lab, and they reviewed our design themselves.

[WesleyC]

Looks very good--I love how you kept the pneumatics nicely tied up and fairly protected. That's one thing I've seen missing a lot in the robots that use pneumatics; it looks scarily easy to get tangled up in a pneumatic hose when in close proximity with these robots.

Make sure those bumpers are extremely solidly mounted, though--you wouldn't want a robot hitting one of your bumpers and knocking it loose into a wheel!