I remember when I went to my first World’s competition in 2019, I was walking to my team’s pit and I saw a motorized robot cart. The guy was just standing and driving it. I was like, “man, I’m gonna be technician next season, I want to ride that. I want a motorized robot cart!”
We never made the motorized cart I wanted but ever since then, I have been wondering, how would you even make a motorized robot cart and has any other teams made a motorized robot cart before.
If you have, share it, If you can! And if you can share the build process/components you used, that would be cool too!
2 Likes
Maybe I’m just the old guy yelling at a cloud, but a motorized robot cart seems like a very bad idea in a crowded venue.
19 Likes
Safety is a significant issue. I suppose it can be done.
How to? Just build a cart and add a motor. Control it with considerable thought to safety for both the operator and the people it may encounter. Thinks like low speed, a dead-man switch, a little mild noise so others hear it (shouting “ROBOT” is not acceptable), simple controls that are mostly error-resistant, and such.
But for those times where you need to get a move on to get to the queue on time, you might learn that motors are sometimes a hindrance.
All that said, it is a cool idea, needing thought and care.
3 Likes
696 uses this cart. It works well. It’s nice to bring the robot base up to standing height to work on it. Moto-Cart Jr. Electric Drive & Lift Carts
It definitely takes training to operate this cart though.
Not sure if it is still allowed, but I remember being at worlds in the early 2000’s and seeing GM teams driving a mini pickup truck go cart with their robot on the back.
I don’t have any pictures or video of it, just the memory.
snickers in road bike at e-bikes Motors have a top speed, humans at a run may have a higher top speed. Or not. But if you’re going faster than Usain Bolt you may have some other safety issues… like stopping in a hurry.
Same. Think that was 94, 67 used trailers and a tow unit. In 2003, they couldn’t handle the Astrodome ramps, which caused some issues.
1 Like
It was team 68 Truck Town Thunder that had the little trucks.
1 Like
I’m just going to leave this here from the JVN blog
robot scooter is 10/10 and faster than pretty much anything else. Just, uuuuh, don’t go so fast that the speed controllers power up if they’re in brake mode.
11 Likes
If this motorized cart is meant to carry your robot, perhaps some extra parts and batteries and a driver, it would likely weigh at least as much as the robot. Are you and your teammates prepared to do all the work necessary transport this to and from events and store it between events?
Team 5006, Apophis from Fayetteville Arkansas, has a motorized cart. It runs quite slowly, about half normal walking speed - perhaps 2 or 2½ ft/s. I found it in their chairman’s video for this year (link below). I don’t have any issues with it for safety, but it definitely slows down queuing - not enough to call them out for, but more than I’d care for for my team. (I queued them at Arkansas in 2019 and 2020.)
And if you think that cart is bulky to transport, their pit is crazy bulky. It looks like a stargate on the entrance (awesome!, and seen around 1:16 in the video) and has a lot of interior bulk, all heavily decorated in the team themes. I hope this offers them lots of storage, because it looks like there isn’t a lot of room left for them work on the robot in their pit. This team has clearly practiced loading and unloading many times (I also did load out, and while I’m good at packing, I was a bit boggled to see that much stuff go into that trailer, and it went really smoothly), but they still took a bit longer than average to load out. Again, not a problem from a rules or event point of view, just - how much time and effort can you devote to branding?
1 Like
We’ve joked about building one. But for all the things we spend money and and invest in - this just doesn’t play out that well each time we bring it up.
There are better capital investments, better training projects, better build projects, and even - get this - building a highly optimized non-motorized robot cart. And I am not being a jerk, the team has been kicking around ideas for a new cart that we call “The Mini-pit”. Essentially a cart that has all needed functionality to do the work needed in the queue line during quarterfinals/some semifinals when the pit is in another banquet hall or across the stadium. And it needs to service the drive and strategy teams as well.
We have had all sorts of carts:
- Harbor Freight folding cart
- Moving Dolly with a rope
- Machinist tool cart compete with 48 drawers (that one blew out a tire at 2017 StLouis Champs and from reactions I think most people thought a shotgun was fired).
- Moving foliding handtruck
- Wood cart
- Current cart that is a steel box on casters with a Scissor lift that doesn’t lift the robot.
If it is a desire of yours to build a motorized cart - by all means go ahead. But I see no true value in it. And this doesn’t even mention what those before me did - the safety factor.
I think first should make it a rule that any powered robot cart has to have some type of dead man’s switch that can’t be activated by accident. I remember at an event a few years back a team with a powered robot cart dropped their controller for it causing it to speed off in a random direction almost hitting one of our members. I would go as far to say that any powered robot cart should be subjected to an inspection to ensure that its dead man switch is properly functional. A cart with a robot on it weighs a lot and will more than likely have some pretty decent ground clearance making it capable of really injuring someone and the safety surrounding them should be taken very seriously.
2 Likes
We built a motorized cart in the spirit of Apophis in 2019. But regionals had moved into smaller spaces and it was told that motorized carts were just to bulky or hazardous in the more cramped high schools.
It was a donated mobility chair, and didn’t originally plan to use this way. Here is a favorite picture of it before it has styling and paint added, so you can see the makeup of it pretty well. The steel welded to extend the frame and add the controls handle was recovered from a prior FRC field.
We added the robot surface and a small toolbox to the front. It had some disadvantage in a smallish front surface, but also could be electronically raised or lowered, and we had prior robots on it fine.
It did turn okay in small spaces and probably had more top speed than wanted. A favorite activity, especially after being outlawed, was for students to go do donuts in the parking lot with it.
4 Likes
The bulk of a motorized cart should be considered. Cowtown Throw down in Lee’s Summit prohibits motorized carts for of the queuing slowdown and space reasons mentioned above by @GeeTwo That said we are looking at putting a lift on our cart.
The biggest at-competition issue with a bulky robot card (motorized or otherwise) is how much pit space they take up. Pits aren’t very big, so you can run into a serious problem relatively quickly.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.