Inventor design of a swerve drive cardboard boat. Mike the cardboard boat dummy sits on a turn table and the whole drive system turns.
Here it is… I’m extremely excited about this innovative design. I’m sure it will impress a lot of people, especially the FIRST community. 
Okay, so any comments or suggestions?
I think this may impress us on the speed also, the boat should be fairly lightweight and with the addition of a second propellor we should be able to turn some water. Unfortunately, I won’t be there to oversee anymore of the build, I have work… lol.
how do you know if it is buoyant enough?
From experience on previous years’ boats, we’ve had more of a problem with the boats being “too” bouyant. Last year’s boat only sat in the water a couple of inches. Cardboard is surprisingly buoyant. The tetra pontoons will be plenty buoyant. By the way, does anyone know if and how you can set custom densities in Inventor? If anyone knows, I’ll post the estimated weight of the boat.
Malhon
I know you can set cusom masses by just filling in the box, haven’t tried it with densities however.
Very innovative! I like - I hope it works. Be sure to post pictures and videos of the real thing.
While I’m not familiar with what speed is required to make for an impressive speed for a cardboard boat, this design looks like it will experience a fair bit of drag compared to a more streamlined, single hull vessel.
You may also find that while this design will exhibit omni-directional drive ability, that it may also exhibit very little directional stability… the ability to track in a straight line.
It is a cool looking design, but I wouldn’t expect it to go fast, or in a particularly straight line. Perhaps if the tetrahedrons were replaced with streamlined “rudders” that each rotated as the pilot did…
Jason
You will have a very difficult time steering this boat. If you’re ever rowed a flat-bottomed inflateable dinghy in the wind, you’ll know why.
It’s a bit like trying to walk on ice.
Powerboats use a V shape hull for tracking, and sailboats use a keel.
You have a couple options to correct that. You can move the propellers so that they will pull the boat. Pushing an unstable boat is like trying to balance a shovel on your hand.
Or you can change from the tetra design to hulls that have self-tracking, like a catamaran.
A number of solutions - but you’re going to have trouble if you don’t implement one of them.
By the way, does anyone know if and how you can set custom densities in Inventor? If anyone knows, I’ll post the estimated weight of the boat.
Create a new material using the Styles Editor:
-Select “Default”, or whatever is closest to cardboard.
-Click “New”, and type in a name for the new material (“Cardboard”).
-Enter the mass properties and click Save.
-You can also edit which texture the material uses by default, as well as other physical properties.
-You’ll have to import the Cardboard material into each part. I’m not sure how to do this with Inventor 11.
-Set the part(s) to be cardboard.
Hope this helps!
Heh, the “impressive speed” is well below the speed required to win a race. We have some difficulties in the past about maneuvering the left hand corners of the 200m course. Our biggest rival is mother nature… if it’s windy, we might be in trouble, but if it isn’t, my guess is that we’ll be fine and we’ll be able to control the boat fairly well.
There is one thing that is for certain. When we go to turn and are carrying some speed, we’ll somewhat drift around the turn. Carrying both forward and left motions. We’ll also lose nearly all of that speed in the turn.
One thing–when you turn the pilot, aren’t you worried about turning the boat instead? It would be easy to do–and just like a helicopter without a second rotor.
That was one of our concerns, but we came to the conclusion that if the pilot stops pedalling at the turn, the resistance required to turn the pilot will be less than that required to turn the boat, so we shouldn’t have a problem with it.
Malhon
If that happens, then I think I’ve got a fairly easy fix.
Tsk Tsk. I don’t see a lifejacket there.:rolleyes:
Interesting concept… certainly doesn’t seem useful outside of still water (I believe that was already mentioned of course).
Well, we tried it yesterday, and won third place in our division… It was extremely slow, completing the course in 10 min 50 sec (just as I was ready to pass out!!) , but it took on no water and didn’t even think about sinking, even with one of the biggest kids on our team Tyler driving it. I think at Galesburg it will be for display purposes only… It turned on a dime as usual, but was slow. Our “FIRST” Attempt boat from two years ago took first place again for i think the fourth time. All in all it was a very fun competition.
Yup, sure did. 4 wins in 5 races. That’s pretty darn good for the very first try. I’m just sad that I didn’t think of a way to port the stream of water out the back on the new boat. It moves water like there’s no tomorrow but man is it slow because the water isn’t forced into an area. I think I may have a fix for that, though.
Anyways, does anyone want to know how “Our ‘FIRST’ Attempt” went about getting extremely lucky enough to win the race? LOL. Of course you do!
Okay, we started off the first heat pretty good when Ed’s (WFFA winning engineer) boat clipped us and we were locked onto it. We were able to pull away a little bit with the superior power that we had, but in that we were also headed towards the inside of the buoy. Our drivers steered right, but over steered and ended up parallel to the stretch, but going the wrong way. In their attempt to turn around both chains apparently came off of the sprocket underwater. Oops. At that time, Ed’s boat also became disabled, both chains had come off of theirs also. That allowed the third boat in the race, which was destined for last place, to easily win the heat and move onto the semis. However, Tyler and Mike didn’t give up. Unknowingly Mike was pedaling a prop that wasn’t moving. By this time they had rounded the first buoy and the wind was taking them towards the second buoy. When they reached the other buoy, Tyler finally realized that he should probably move some water, so he used his hands to paddle and finally get us over the finish line. That’s how we moved onto the semi-finals.
In the semis we were paired against a good boat that could have competed with us, but unfortunately his boat (Miss Mudweiser) derailed before he got to the first buoy, leaving us the ability to walk away with a second heat win.
The finals came around and somehow both of our boats had made it into the race (new boat averaged about 12mins per race, but finished all). So did Ed’s and another boat from Cedar Rapids, IA. Finally came the fun time to show our stuff, we handily took the W after Ed’s boat again died. Side Note: They had won their semifinal match, but lost a propeller in doing so. I don’t know why the guy that won the first heat didn’t make it into the finals, he ran sub-4:00 races each time. 
We have more to be proud of than our 1st and 3rd place finishes. We took home our 5th Spirit Award and Josh got 3rd Place in the instant boat class with his boat “The Brown Floater Deux.” He made that boat while the rest were competing.
And so ends an exciting day of cardboard boat racing.
let’s see some pictures!!
The only picture I know of is here.
It was a full color picture on the inside page of QC Area part of today’s newspaper. I was suprised that they put us on there. That would be a photo of Tyler doggypaddling “Our ‘FIRST’ Attempt” during the heat. As you can see, the article features a nice chunk of team 648 and even mentions the innovativeness of our new boat design.
EDIT: I’ve found another article in the other daily newspaper here.
More pictures can also be found here.
There’s some very good photos of our boats on there, but you can’t see them up close without buying them. tear