What if you are paired with a team that doesn’t have a normal wheel base?
It would be nearly impossible for our robot to drive onto yours with our drive train. Did you consider situations such as this?
Ramps can not be designed for every circumstance. In this case they would have to take the match with you and only get the lift points for 1 robot.
However, did you take into account the wieght and the extra diffuculty in designing for a non-classic drive base. If your robot is a 28 x 38 robot, and its wheels are within 6 inches of each side it seems like you would be able to make it up there no problem.
good idea guys. Nice and Simple
i think their primary objective with the design of these ramps is to keep weight down and allow a general percentage of robots to be able to climb up on top of them. sure they might run into a robot or two that can’t fit on top of it, but what’s not letting one or two robots on versus letting one or two and not the rest… if that makes sense…
it looks pretty though guys 
wow… thats… large… Can’t wait to see it in action.
Can we get some more detail on the ramp system? How are guys unfolding that thing?
You know that there are only two other alliance partners you can lift, right? Kidding aside, that looks very long and very capable of holding a couple robots. It reminds of a car carrier on the highway. I like it a lot! The use of expanded aluminum should provide a great, high traction surface to drive on.
Any more details about it? Weight, length, how it’s deployed? Great job to have something that “finished” this early in the season.
BEN
That looks very nice. I definitely want to see the deployment mechanism in action. Well done!
is it just me, or does it look suspiciously like something I saw last week at Jiffy Lube? /flashes on mental image of robots driving up and asking for an oil change…/
-dave
Are you going to add any higher traction material (such as rubber treading, velcro, or carpet) on top of the aluminum grating to assist robots even further in climbing on?
how much does it weigh?
I got a look at this last night coincidentally as they were taking the picture of this thing when I went down there to work with their programming students. It’s pretty impressive considering 1390s very limited resources. I’m not gonna comment much on the plans but I know the weight-to-benefit ratio was pretty good, the whole base without anything else was like between 55-60 pounds they said (I forgot the exact number). Considering that it was all made by hand I thought it was very well made and an excellent example of what you can do with some tools and ingenuity. You could stick their entire team on this thing and it probably wouldn’t break, very robust… simple… and I’d imagine when the motor is on it will be quite reliable. I can’t wait to see it in a week or so when things are starting to move motor-driven. Watch out for the new 1390, they’re definitely on their way to being a fierce competitor this year!
We are assuming for the majority of robots to be able to climb the ramp, if we happened to be paired up with two robots that can not, then we our using the KOP chasis with six wheel drive to climb on some one else. If there are no other ramps, then we will never deploy the ramp and score until the end. Our arm is not finished yet, I’ll try to get some details on that later. This ramp was just finished being welded as of yesterday, we’ll post more information and video once we connect it to a motor (some one hold me to this). Thanks for all of the compliments, we’ll try to have some specs and more information up soon, feel free to ask any questions.
Does it telescope out from a chain or pulley loop?
Hey everyone, yeah, I’m here to answer some of those questions. So first of all, the entire ramp assembly is about 20 pounds, and is about 91 inches long. The whole ramp telescopes out from the top of our robot, and employs the use of a pulley system. We are not going to use any other traction material ontop of our existing ramp, as this would add too much extra weight for what we want to do. Thanks all for the interest, we’ll keep you posted. Oh, and we just had four robots on top of it ;)-]-<.
that is such an outstanding job. looks similar to ours in terms of the outer edges having the platform for robots to drive on without the center. We are doing that also since our arm takes up the center space prior to our ramp being deployed.
cant please everyone with ramp designs but I bet you will be able to accomodate the majority of the field!
We are providing low-cost oil changes for all visitors to our shop as a fund-raising effort.