Looks great. This machine should be a great competitor if the launcher works as well as I think it will.
Looks very nice and streamlined. I like how the side plate for the entire drivetrain also serves as one of the sides to the gearbox. How is the whole system tensioned? Can’t wait to see the rest of it.
Mike C.
Beautiful drivetrain. Keep up the good work!
What is your ground clearance?
There is no tensioner for the belts implemented at the moment. It will probably end up being a piece of delrin underneath the bumper standoffs (the bigger plate between the sides).
At the sides, our ground clearance is 1/2". Our battery plate is below this, so in the middle it’s 3/8". We also have a few nuts below that. There’s a video from ground-level of this thing driving floating around somewhere, so hopefully we can upload that and show it to everybody.
Just a warning, there is a ~1/2" bump on the playing field around the lane divider.
This will go right over it. Remember, it has wheels. 
Here you go, 2 vids 1 of us turning on a dime, and the other doing a little driving
nice design but will it hold up if a ball is dropped on it.
Very nice, I’ll have to spend some time looking it over in a few weeks!
we have designed this to be a very robust system, similar to last year’s design. example: some new members of the team were testing reading encoder values, something went wrong and the disable switch did not disable, the robot ended up driving/falling/jumping a set of 4 stairs, not a thing happened to it.
Absolutely. The system is extremely sturdy, and not much of that (if any) will be prone to contact by a ball once we get our other mechanisms on it.
A couple days ago I spent some time throwing the ball at our robot…what fun!
Maybe, maybe not, depends on whether the 1/2" bump is a 1/2" and it isn’t 5/8" of 3/4" at a regional.
It will go over it.
With our 6WD, the front wheel makes contact before any other part. Thus putting up on top of the “plateau”. The back wheel is also now in contact with the ground. As the robot continues over, the middle wheel hops up, front and back wheels now off the ground. The robot continues forward (center wheel is driving), front wheels back on teh ground, back wheels on the plateau.
Also, the lip has a bit of a “fillet” to it if you will. Tape gives as pseudo ramp up to the height of whatever 1/2" or 3/4" as you claimed.
I still dont think it will be an issue. The bump is going to have carpet on it (or tape or something similarly squish-able), and it wont be in a perfect square orientation (it will look more like a speed bump).
Even if the bot bottoms out it will tip to one side and the wheels still in contact with the ground will push it over.
Think back to 2005. Teams who designed their robot with a low ground clearance so they wouldn’t get stuck in goals ended up stuck in them anyway.
I’m not concerned about clearance unless the front the bot is what hits first, which clearly its not from Brandon’s post. I was only concerned about the bottom dragging and causing any damage.
I think they’re pretty safe. a 1/2" piece of plate isn’t going to gain 1/4" from event to event.
I’m just trying to be the devil’s advocate here. Pittsburgh regional they lay down 4x8 warped plywood on the gym floor under the carpet. Last 2 years we were there, you could have as much as an 1" bump in the floor.