Is there a limit to cart size in Houston? We’re wondering about using the top of our crate as a cart.
Does the crate need to be fully closed for storage during the competition?
There’s no official rule policing the size of a robot cart to my knowledge. But one should also ensure their cart is not so big that it is challenging to maneuver. A robot shipping crate is typically 4’ x 4’ x 4’. Are you planning to have a robot cart 4’ wide by 4’ long?
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The only rule that dictates robot cart size is event rule e602:
E602. *Carts shouldn’t be too big. Carts must fit through a standard 30-inch door.
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I was thinking 4x4. Maybe 3x4 or 2x4 if we break the cover into 2 pieces.
I’ve never completed in Houston before so I wondered about the door rule.
I’d strongly urge you not to go 4’ x 4’. Even 3’ x 4’ seems excessively large to me. If it were up to me (and was needing to make repurposing the crate work), I’d go with the 2’ x 4’ size. Chopping one of your panels in half seems an easy enough solution.
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If I were you I’d just hit the nearest store when you land and get a new cart or have something shipped to your hotel.
Leave it for some local team when you’re done if you don’t want to take it back home.
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A lot of teams used to use their shipping crate as a part of their pit setup back when we HAD to crate ship them. I have seen many crates that hinged in half for use as a pit space, wouldn’t be too bad to plan something around that for a cart.
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I worked on queueing at the Wisconsin regional and saw lots, and lots of carts. I can’t comment specifically on what’s allowed at Worlds, but I have a few suggestions to share.
- If you don’t need to carry much other than the robot, the easiest, simplest cart designs I saw was a furniture dolly (flat board with 4 caster wheels). They don’t take up much space, but are very maneuverable.
- Be careful of a typical moving dolly. I saw several teams try to use one and none of their robots fit well on them, and lifting the robots off were awkward.
- Not a cart, but having a driver station with your laptop, controllers, power adapter, etc. that has a strap ensures your laptop and everything is well taken care of, if you don’t have place for it on your cart. Teams who were carrying their laptops in with cords dropping down made me nervous. Teams who had their laptops, etc. in backpacks were always the slowest to be ready for their matches to setup.
- Also not a cart, but it was very clear which teams had a well practiced routine for moving the robot on and off the field and setting up their driver station. Make sure everyone knows exactly what their role is. It gives them confidence, more time and reduces the chaos between matches.
- There was one team with a huge cart, that was roughly 3x4 ft. It was a clever cart, which had part of their pit setup. But, it was a challenge to maneuver in tight quarters. Like the previous poster said, I’d stick to no more than 2x4.
Good luck!
If your cart extends more than 3” or so off the front and sides, and more than 12” off the back from the robot, you’re very likely doing it wrong. Ideally the cart barely has a larger footprint than the robot, or even smaller if you can get away with that safely.
Most of 2019 champs I just rode the robot like a kick scooter.
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I purchased a cart like this on behalf of a team from overseas and brought it to GRB along with spare parts they drop shipped to me.
I would strongly urge teams not to use moving dollys or furniture dollys that have 4 casters that turn. They are difficult to keep moving in a straight line.
Here is our current cart.
We set the LED’s to our alliance color.
Also, the part that the robot sits on flips up for easier storage.
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How curious … I was queuing at Bayou and on Friday I saw these three awesome carts:
IMHO, a robot cart should:
- Support your robot so that the wheels are free to spin.
- Not be much larger than your robot in either dimension, especially width as the cart travels so you can fit through doors.
- Be relatively low to the ground. Your robot on the cart should never be taller than 6’8," again to fit through doors.
- Be able to carry a spare battery
- Optionally, may carry your driver station, and the tools and consumables you actually use in the queue (optionally because drive team members can carry these around).
For bonus points, a robot cart should either double as the stand for the robot in the pit, or be able to fold up and be put in a rather small space.
Oh, another neat cart I saw this weekend - a pre-2014 C-channel chassis with a handle, skids, and cart wheels added:
Thanks all. The theme of this thread is that for those of us in MI, we won’t know if we are eligible for Worlds until the end of the FIM Championship on 4/16, and if we are we need to pack the robot in a crate at the event before we head home to get it to Houston by 4/20. The crate has a weight limit of 400 lbs, so that’s basically a crate, the robot, 6 batteries and bumpers. There is very little left over for a robot cart, so that’s why I asked about integrating a cart into the crate. We’ll be checking any tools in individual’s luggage, so that will get interesting at World Championship.
As a team who’s had to transport a large amount of our pit thru luggage at one point in time, I can’t recommend enough Recycle Rush or similarly shaped totes. Did that for transporting a part of our pit 2017 Champs and has always been a fallback if anything wasn’t packed in the moving van/trailer.
I know it’s a big ask but if you know any teams qualified that are already headed to Worlds who wouldn’t mind throwing something in for you, something similar happened at the regional level for 3128 in 2018. Our robot cart didn’t fit in the van headed to Idaho and I wanna say I threw a mini dolly in my luggage but I knew some people on 1983 Skunkworks headed to the regional and they were gracious enough to bring a full sized dolly to use at the event. Obviously, a furniture dolly won’t be perfect but it’s a decent last minute attempt at that.
If I may piggyback on your question, is there a height limit in Houston we should be aware of?
Are there doorways to go through? At our regional, the height limit was 8 feet which worked well because our cart is taller so we can easily work on our robot while its on the cart and the ending configuration or robot is taller than its starting configuration.
From what I remember, you should be good up to 20’ or so? In some places there are diagonal members that form sort of trees to support the upper floor, but you’d have to try and hit those, easily 10’ plus. I don’t remember needing to fit the robot through a single standard height or even width doorway.
That said, please please please please do not be taller than like 7’ at max.
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