According to that ruling, yes it does. I doubt FIRST had thought of our case when they made that ruling so we’re betting that they’ll let us get away with out base being the other parts of our robot. It will be very clear that our robot is in the loading zone when it is so we didn’t feel there’d be a problem.
Matt
i think that rule is meant for keeping people from having arm that hang down and touch the oading zone while grabbing a tetra. in this case, i hope there aren’t problems.
whats the details for your drives for this year?
You’re awfully inquisitive for someone that doesn’t show full pictures of your own robot!
haha, i was going to show a video of our robot but we rejected by the mentors…
What’s with all the secrecy? It’s not like anyone is going to steal your design now.
they can get a strategy on how to defend us.
Yeah, but wouldn’t teams figure that out on Thursday? 
That looks almost exactly like what I envisioned.
Once a GRR always a GRR?
Looks amazing… very elegant design.
Have you had any issues with the tetras sliding down the arm when the arm is raised at an angle? Or is there a way that they are held in place?
Out of curiousity, what motors are you using to control the arm joint angles?
And I am also wondering… what is your drive train setup? I see that it is 4wd, but not much else.
And the telescoping… how is that done? (I think I am seeing telescoping sections on the secondary arm)
Hopefully I will be able to see this in action.
Great job!!
We did have issues with the tetras sliding down but if you notice there’s a cross piece on the end of the arm which holds the tetras out at the end of the arm. The arm is being controller by the CIM motor for the lower arm and the van door motor for the upper arm. There’s a variety of gearing in there that you really can’t see in the picture.
The drive is three-speed four wheel drive. The front wheels are modified wheel chair wheels and the rear are custom wheels.
The telescoping only happens once at a beginning of a match and then locks in place.
Matt
how do you lower yourself? Is the drive train/robot in general doing well with the bumps it may take while lowering itself?
It’s lowered simply by driving backwards. The robot does quite fine with the bumps it receives. We’ve run it enough times not to be worried about it.
Matt
As Matt has written, we do keep the tetras from sliding with a cross bar. The final design didn’t come until 3AM tuesday. It actually enables us to tilt the tetra as we raise it.
Aslo as Matt wrote, we drive the lower section of the arm with a CIM attached to a dewalt transmission in low gear (Thank you Dr, Joe). The upper section is a geared down van door motor.
We are running a 3 speed 4 wheel drive system using 2 CIM’s run again through the dewalt transmissions, (thanks again Dr. Joe). the back wheels are custom machined & the front are modified wheelchair wheels.
The last part is the telescoping section at the end of the upper arm. It is gravity fed. It is held in place until it clears the body of the robot & then opens to release.
I hope this info helps.
Thanks to everyone on this thread for your compliments. Truely shows that FIRST is not about just building robots 