Our students want to do a demonstration at a pep rally in our gym, not necessarily with the season swerve robot. We can use other robots with tank drive, and we can install any wheels we want.
Running on a giant piece of carpet is not a preferred option due to cost and lack of a good place to store it.
Does anybody have suggestions informed by experience? Has anybody tried running over some other sort of protective surface that takes up less space than carpet, or has anybody found a wheel type that is gentle enough to run directly on a gym floor?
this does not directly answer your question, but from what we’ve tried, running billet wheels on mk4i results in scuff marks, but they were easily removed with wet rag. if we needed to avoid scuffs, we would lower our max speed to like 50% which is 2.25 m/s linear
When we attend outreach events where we dont want to scuff up the floor, we switch from tread wheels to Colson wheels. This prevents marks on the floor and has proven effective for us. We also operate our robot very conservatively to minimize slipping, ensuring smooth acceleration and deceleration, along with a lower maximum speed, which helps prevent marks from appearing in the first place.
Colson wheels would definitely be preferable, I would avoid running billet wheels on a gym floor at any speed, just because of the chance of impacting the surface with the screws/rivets.
Our demo bot runs pneumatic wheels which seem to be the most forgiving option we’ve found (that said, that robot is also tank drive, pneumatic wheels are harder to put on a swerve).
For swerve, colsons are good, however they can still leave scuffs and visible marks everywhere. I would recommend that, instead of relying on the driver to do so, have the programmers set a really low acceleration, as most of the marks are caused by sudden acceleration or from wheels swerving. You can limit the speed of the swerve as well.
Low speeds are the best option in general, at low speeds its hard for anything to leave a mark. 2016 robot (Rhino Nitrile Tread) has run on floors and been fine. 2020 with bald tires ran fine as well, although same marks as colsons were found.
If there’s anything I learned by working in a school for more than a decade, it is that there are few that are more precious than the gym floor. Good luck to you.
You should also check to see if your school has floor covers for the gym. Many schools have these to protect gym floors when they have other kinds of events in them where non-athletes may be walking and whatever on the gym floors in street shoes. They’re made of very heavy duty vinyl. Using these will help ensure that your wheels don’t damage the gym floor and you don’t have to buy them or figure out where to store them (your athletic department will already have done all that.)
I’ve never seen these at our school, but I’ll check if we have it. I’ve thought about this, but it seems like the wheels would grab the tarp and drag it around. If anybody has experience with this, that would be interesting to hear about.
I’ve seen teams do demos at pep rallies before, and running robots in a gym can definitely be a challenge when trying to protect the floor. If you’re not able to use carpet, a couple of things you could try include swapping out for non-marking wheels, which can help prevent scuffing the floor. Soft rubber or omni-wheels tend to be easier on the surface, but it’s always a good idea to test them beforehand.
Another option I’ve seen work is rolling out those vinyl or protective mats that gyms sometimes use during non-sporting events. They’re not as heavy-duty as carpet but offer a decent layer of protection. If that’s still too bulky, some teams have tried using tarp-like material—just make sure it’s securely taped down so it doesn’t slide around when the robot moves.
If your robot isn’t too aggressive, you might be able to run on the bare gym floor with some soft wheels, but that really depends on how cautious you want to be with the surface. Definitely worth giving it a test run with something lightweight!
These are generally a rubbized/vinyl tarp, quite heavy and difficult to wrinkle (compared to what you may buy at the hardware store). As long as you are not being aggressive when driving I can’t really see these tarps getting wrinkled or dragged around if laid flat to start with.
We haven’t driven directly on that material, but we do put it down under the field at our week zero event.
Winter color guards and winter drumlines typically either get that custom screen printed on vinyl, or they just paint it themselves on top of old billboards. There are a number of online and local places that you can purchase those billboards from.
Better than no protection and will prevent wheel marks on the gym floor, but won’t do much good to protect against the types of things that typically lead to holes in the carpet like driving up against a wall and continuing to drive the wheels.
As others have noted, these floor protectors are very heavy stuff, they really doesn’t wrinkle when things are moving on them. As long as you don’t try driving at high speed or making crazy maneuvers, you’ll be fine.
When we present at public schools we take a box of floor tiles (same as what FTC uses). Takes less than 5 minutes to set up a 10x10 space for robot demonstrations. It’s not ideal but it is quick and easy and schools really appreciate that we aren’t marking up their floor.
