Lawn Mowing
Caring for Plants
Feeding Jack-Jack the Fish
Cooking
Changing Diapers
Completing all tasks on the Honey-Do List
…send me THAT robot and I’ll spring for Dave’s salary AND lunch.
And while you’re at it, someone please design a robot that will update a college website so I can surf CD while pretending to do work! 
(Oh, and Dave, nothing beats academic staff salaries…)
I don’t know if anyone else did this, but last year our drive modules expanded by the force of a piston. They expanded 4" on each side.
I’ve been tinkering with a climbing wheel design(its like tank treads but on its own individual wheel)it kind of resembles a ferris wheel. I got the idea from an experimental WWI british tank design
Could you elaborate on that a little? Do you have a picture?
They make those for trucks. Essentially it’s a set of four tank treads mounted onto the rims of the truck. It works pretty wheel.
i saw earlier that som eof you are looking at cvt'swell one year my team tryed to make then and it turned into a disaster the parts of it were al so heavy and then to shift it it is hard you cant just use a pnuematic unless it is multi positional but see wut you come up with, cause after all everybody has diff ideas…most of the time
Someone might want to correct me don’t cvt’s shift on their own. They don’t need a pnuematic device to change gears. That is the advantage of cvts.
How about this thing ?
I think it’s a good idea that could use some refinement. You get the best of both worlds, push and omni. I think mechanum was the new thing on the scene last year, and it’s still in its baby stages (Hey Andymark.biz - Mechanum Wheels… hint hint!!!). Mechanum makes a lot of sense if you want the holonomic effect with better traction and less complexity in the chassis design, but still boils down to the “makeability” of such a thing.
People have done a wonderful job extracting maximum efficiency from all the given kit components while applying them effectively. The innovation levels have been tremendous. Necessity will bring innovation. I think we’ve tackled most of the difficult aspects of a carpet competition robot as far as the drive base goes. A lot of innovation gets overlooked in the manipulators. But makes no sense to design to the unknowns.
I have a cool idea.
Instead of “who has them” I should have said “post them”
I don’t really care who has them, I just care about the ideas themselves.
i got to get a picture because i know you people will love it. on our arm to extend it we used a simple cable and pulley system. the catch is that the cable was this special toothed cable (looks like a normal cable but with a second cable kind of spiraling up the length of it) that fit perfectly into toothed pulleys. the benefit you ask. absolutely no slippage so instead of a bulky pneumatic setup or motor rig we had this thin cable. it worked beautifully. 
yeah this is exactly what we used. it works like this.
Now that is some cool stuff. I had never seen it before. What keeps the black cord from unraveling and how much load can this stuff take? How is the black cord attached to the silver cord?
the silver and black cord are bound together and coated with a clear plastic. they can hold alot of force but slack is REALLY bad its alot easier for the cord to come out of the pully then to put it back in. if their is no slack then your fine becuase its really a metal cable and really works smoothly with the pulley
I don’t have a picture. But this is how it worked. We built 4 drive modules that fit inside of our robot and could easily slide in and out of the fram of the bot.
The modules were all conected to a central point by hinging peices of metal together. There was one piston that ran up the center of out robot. When that piston expanded, it pushed on the central point causing the peices of metal to hinge outwards and expand the overall lenght of the 2 pieces connected to each other. Each module had its own 2 piece of metal that were hinged together that met up at a certain point. So when the piston pushed down, the drive module were pushe out of the fram of the bot.
Forgive me if the explanation is bad. I am too tired to think properly.
i want to see what people did with electronics. we realized the control board and the power board were the exact same size and mounted them back to back. we also mounted neon tubes to the bottom of the bot and used a nylon mesh tubing that is used in PCs to bind our electrical… oh yeah and used magnetic limit switches to determine the exact angle of our arm (im thinking of trying a potentiometer for next year but i think the magnets are more reliable).
LOL! remember my “soap box” thread about clear and concise titles? 
I personally have worked on this idea for a while- ever since I saw the 3 wheeled omni directional bot. I have been thinking, and I thought of a way to give the drivetrain pushing power- this has been the key problem in this design. All that I need is a game that would support the idea.
And also- The design is very secret… so I may not share it until it has been tested.
I have a cool idea its basically holonomic with treads. Think omni treads.
Something … like this
Santosh and i have been on IM allot and have been throwing around a cool design (among other cool ideas) for a treaded crab drive. I’m keeping the details to myself Santosh can share if he wants but its nice!