Blitz, Team 343, Metal in Motions 2003 robot on the Ice for a mini competition during the intermission of a Hockey match.
That’s interesting…
As the “Force from the North” with four robots named Blizzard, you can imagine that we’ve had discussions about how our various robots would perform on ice. That was even a major motif in our 2000 animation.
In our scientific opinion, our best robot for ice hockey would have been Blizzard 3 (of 2002), with its metal-cleated wheels (before that was rendered illegal), 9 ft/s top speed and low centre of gravity.
If they just cover up the ice at the Canadian Regional, instead of removing it (the Hershey Centre is an arena) maybe we can take the robot for a quick spin afterward…
I was curious, how did the robot perform on the ice? Was it more maneuvarable with the slick surface, did u have problems driving cause of traction?
That’s cool.
I would bet that the Technokat robots from 1999 thru 2002 would do well on ice.
Raul
Thanks for the question miketwalker. We had a very brief practice before the hockey match started and our traction was fine. The competition was played after a period of play and before the Zambonie came out. There was a lot of ice chips on the ice then. They packed onto our tracks and made it very difficult to move. Maybe we should have precooled our robot before we went out. We would have loved to use our 2002 robot Manuel Overdrive but they asked us not to use it because, like Blizzard 3, it has metal wheels. A FIRST competition on ice would certainly produce some interesting designs.
An ice competition sounds cool, but it is another “water competition” idea in my mind. Sounds good but realistically, it won’t happen in the near future.
I would love to see other team’s traction solutions to deal with the ice, however.
NO! Stop the RUMORS NOW! AHAHAHAH!!!
Anyway, if there is an ice competition, then FIRST can go on tour like Disney On-Ice! but instead be called FIRST On-Ice! Imagine the possibilities!
Soon we will have the Robo-Capades!!
Ivey