Round Robot(s)

Who all out there besides 3574 is doing a round robot and round bumpers?

I’d love to see a photo of that.

Seconded.

Thirded. How are you supposed to make a truly round robot? The world’s largest lathe?

Ooh, ooh, I know this! The robot isn’t actually circular, it’s more kind of an oval with cutouts. No, I don’t have pictures, I haven’t been to the build space in a while. Stupid homework.

Fourth…ed? Yeah some pictures please! although hopefully you took some before the 'bot was bagged…

Here is a picture that was taken yesterday morning. The freesbee colector had not been instaled yet, but we’ll have a better picture before midnight :wink:
27.5 inches heigh
35.5 inches Diameter
As of yesterday she weight 85 pounds and we expect her not to weight more than 100 pounds by the time she’s ready for competition.





Not quite round, but octagonal!

(we do have a shooter, just wasn’t ready in time for Suffield Shakedown.)

Bending.

Dont take this the wrong way, but that thing looks so cute. lol

Its so tiny and its hanging.

It does look cute, but don’t let the angle fool you! It’s about 30" wide and 36" long! Our shooter looks kind of like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. With that on top it looks like a bit more than the little drive train that could (hang)!

That is awesome, good job.

Which Regional(s) are you attending? I enjoyed competing with you guys in Seattle last year. It was amazing to see a rookie team so inspired and prepared to compete with everyone else. Team Mean Machine is attending Portland and Spokane since Seattle and Ellensburg filled before we could get a spot. Good Luck!

Our team had a round robot two years ago for Logomotion. It was convex for approximately 270 degrees, and had a slightly concave section for the remaining 90 degrees. It was completely wrapped in conformal bumpers. This year we have round corners. This totally befuddled the inspector at the LA scrimmage. I would attach photos, but I’m on my iPad now, and can’t easily do that.

We were somewhat thwarted by the mid-build clarification that imposed a new over-restrictive bumper rule for round robots or robots with round corners. Two years ago, we were thwarted by an inter-competition rule change that did the same for our previous round robot’s concave bumper section. Now, we’re very focused on overcoming the consequence of the new restriction, with something (anything) before our first competition.

Edit: just saw the picture from 3574. That looks really neat! What is your base material? It looks like a solid carbon laminate.

I’m curious about your round bumpers. On our prior round robot, we laminated 5 layers of a 5/32" mahogany plywood, dry, to make our ~14-1/2" radius bumpers.

This year, we needed a tighter 8" inside radius. We also wanted a very light bumper to aid in climbing. To get this, we made a birch-balsa-birch sandwich, similar to what was used in the brittish DeHaviland Mosquito bomber of World War II. We had to soak the birch for over two days to get it pliable enough, and then had to let everything dry on forms before laminating. This was a LOT of work, and took the efforts of ten students from start to finish. We learned a lot of ways to miscommunicate ideas and instructions.

Your curved wood is very uniform and clean. What did you use to get this great result?

What the students did was hook a industrial vacuum bag to a compressor and bent the layers with that. They pretty much glued them together, stuck them in vacuumed the air out and let it sit for a day.

Team 2620 isn’t round nor a rectangle :wink: hint corner climb hint

Are you a pentagon?

No sir, we have 8 ‘sides’

Another picture with finished bumpers in competition, looks like those might even be reversible with that seem down the middle.