We call it the Mighty Auk and hopefully this is what your robot will be seeing during autonomous mode.
Very nice!! I’m assuming your arms have some kind of gripping material at their bottoms to stick to the polycarb… right?
also- the pic title says " expect to see this at the end of your autonomous mode" - so how fast is it?
… Wow. Very nice, as always!
How are you staying on the top of the ramp? Suction cups?
- Katie
As in standard techno fasion, you’ve chosen to battle it out with the guys with the beefy drive trains. Very nice looking, and I’m sure you’ve got the gearing ratio’s and traction devices to back up the meanicing feel.
Good luck.
Good luck. Everyone knows how well this design faired last year with MOE and Sparky 3.0.
It looks nice but suction cups won’t even help. Though suction cups may prevent lifting up, they still slide around… and we all know torque = force over distance and there’s a huge distance between the span of your ‘wings’ and your drive train… Robots can probably spin you around like a top 
And the way we’re doing things, we can hit you right on that outer most wing part in autonomous
*Originally posted by monsieurcoffee *
**It looks nice but suction cups won’t even help. Though suction cups may prevent lifting up, they still slide around… and we all know torque = force over distance and there’s a huge distance between the span of your ‘wings’ and your drive train… Robots can probably spin you around like a top
. . . you’ll notice that their wings are designed to deflect some of the force of an oncoming robot.
. . . you’ll also notice that, unlike many other robots like this, they have taller towers at each end of their wings. I’d bet it’s not for suction cups. There are lots of other cool, interesting things you could do with that space.
Have faith. 45 isn’t unbeatable, but they’re not a stupid bunch, either. They’re a well balanced team that thinks things through, and I doubt you’ll find anything that’s a sure fire way of getting by them just by looking at their robot.
good as always… is glad 45 isn’t at the long island regional
very sharp robot as always…
*Originally posted by monsieurcoffee *
**It looks nice but suction cups won’t even help. Though suction cups may prevent lifting up, they still slide around… and we all know torque = force over distance and there’s a huge distance between the span of your ‘wings’ and your drive train… Robots can probably spin you around like a top
Knowing the Technokats, I highly DOUBT you could spin them at all, let alone like a top. Perhaps you should look at their previous drivetrain teasers. Techno-tranny 2003 with those pretty rubber tracks can probably own 99% of robots out there… Do you really think your part of the 1%?
You can be sure a team as high quality as 45 will make sure their suction cups won’t “slide around”. Whatever they have at the end of those wings, likely isn’t easy to move, laterally or otherwise.
Personally, I can’t wait to get a close look at that bot in Houston…
Good luck to 45 this year!
do those colored flags do anything besides give a nice atmosphere and help the driver orient themselves? also, i remember there being a teaser about omni-wheels. could that be in the big mysterious container at the end of each wing? that would allow 45 to move themselves back when needed, if someone pushed them.
also, i’m sure there’s something hidden. if the technokats plan to sit on top for 2 minutes, i would be dissapointed. of course, that makes me think a modular robot, which would mean these wings are but a part of what will be showing up. of course, we didn’t see anything besides the wings, drive train, and omni-wheels. of course, maybe the omni-wheels could completely replace the treads, but that’d be slightly insane i think. doable, but slightly insane.
all in all though, very nice robot. i hope to see more in houston (if 810 comes and makes our bot work :p).
It looks like they’re hiding some neat mechanisms in those nacelles. They could have a secondary drive out there that would kill any force you pushed them with. I think you should of made one of the flags green so it would fit marine standards.
*Originally posted by JVN *
**Knowing the Technokats, I highly DOUBT you could spin them at all, let alone like a top. Perhaps you should look at their previous drivetrain teasers. Techno-tranny 2003 with those pretty rubber tracks can probably own 99% of robots out there… Do you really think your part of the 1%?
**
the only surefire way i see of beating this bot is getting to the ramp before they do. those arms may make it a great blocker, but they also make it easy to block.
*Originally posted by Solace *
**the only surefire way i see of beating this bot is getting to the ramp before they do. those arms may make it a great blocker, but they also make it easy to block. **
obviously the wings come up, otherwise that wouldnt make it within the FIRST size limits of starting
with that bot, i think they would be able to push you off the top if they really wanted to, they are probably right about them having some type of drive on those arms, they look pretty big and easily able to hide something in
*Originally posted by D.J. Fluck *
**obviously the wings come up, otherwise that wouldnt make it within the FIRST size limits of starting **
sorry, i knida pulled two completely random trains of thought into that comment. (me brain works not today) the arms are one thing - the reason that getting to the ramp first would work is becauseteam 45 uses tracks, and tracks don’t conform to the ramp. If they come up enought to have part of their drive train sticking up over the top of the ramp but not all the way up, and someone hits them at that moment, then you would literally be pushing up on their robot. that would reduce the normal force needed for traction and make them easily stopped.
of course, the chance that this would happen during autonomous mode is extremely small. It was just an idea.
I know a robot that can get them off the top tof the bridge 
. hehehe
Oh i’m sure thats a wonderful robot and that most conventional king of the hill robots won’t stand a chance against it. Kudos to the technokats for that. Under those arms are probably motor assemblys that have wheels forced into the ground which are powered. My team had a design like that but we opted against it. So you can’t turn it, you probably can’t even push it, or get past it other than limboing under the bar. So how do you propose getting by it?
Well its pretty simple actually, you just stick an arm under its wing in that nice areaunder it and… lift! Yeah my teams arm is strong enough to lift a robot, so while we’re not allowed to remove you from the ground, you’re not going to have any traction while we get tons!, so our two wheel drive boy can push you right off the top and down the other side. :rolleyes:
I just love our arm!
2 wheel drive is deffinately the way to go. we’ve been 2 wheel drive ever since 2001 and its worked very well in all cases. nice traction because you can focus weight just for 2 wheels, and then if you pick up part of a robot with an arm (which we do have as well) you could add a lot of traction. or you can do what we do this year and be able to shift your center of gravity with the arm
*Originally posted by Ian W. *
**if the technokats plan to sit on top for 2 minutes, i would be dissapointed. of course, **
Team 71 last year did nothing but crawl across the field the whole match, and look what happen to them…Well wildstang and Technokats had them beat at MMR but just had a few bad breaks, but still.
Too the Technokats, you did a wonderful job as always. I respect your team greatly.
There are 2 possible ramp-doms, the wall-dom exemplified by the Kats who really on their traction to keep them on the ramp. The other is the wedge-dom(team 179) whos bot doesn’t allow you to push it directly. They both have weaknesses because you could push the wall-dom but a bot could run over the wedge-dom. At this point I’d put my money on the Kats because their drive-trains are always on the leading edge.
As for the best kind of drivetrain, it depends on your strategy but I dislike unpowered wheels, IE 2 wheel drive or castors. The reason being is you lose effictive mass. Unpowered wheels bear weight, weight that would otherwise be used to increase your traction. So instead of your bots drivewheels being pushed down with 130lbs of force there being pushed down by less. Which means you lose pushing power.