Tonight while we had some people working on our robot (powered on because our programmers were testing sensor readings, but no driving was being done) the robot began to drive one wheel. Nobody was hurt in this incident, but we determined that the cause of this unwarranted driving was a blown black Jaguar speed controller. It appeared to short, but there were no signs of damage on the circuit board of the Jag. Blown Jaguar for no reason. Just wanted to inform everyone to always be careful when working and whenever possible, work with the robot powered off.::safety::
The best option is to turn the robot off, but sometimes that just isn’t practical. One way to make sure that you remain safe is to have quick connectors for all your motors. We use Anderson Powerpole’s for all our connections, and simply unplug them whenever we are working on the robot while it is on.
chain is especially dangerous, and a cim will cut a finger off easily.
While powering down is preferred, you can also pull the breakers for your drive motors (or any other subsystem you need to lock out for safety).
Put blocks under your frame so that the wheels aren’t touching the ground whenever it is on and you don’t want it to drive. 