Team 007 - 2008: Thunderbot - Drive

FIRST Robot Showcase
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We haven’t really been all that active on the forums so far this season, so I thought I’d post some pictures of what we’ve got so far. We haven’t added any ball manipulators just yet, but we have a neat little drive system. It’s not quite finished, but we can put it together enough to show you these:

Front
Back

We’re going with a steering method that’s kind of like a traditional car steering. Writing code for it ought to be interesting, considering that we’ve been doing tank drive since I joined the team…

Pic 1
Pic 2

Feel free to react. Comments and/or suggestions are welcomed, though we may not get to answer your questions.

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wow them are HUGE wheels.

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you should put on spinners and hydrolics,
pimp my bot

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Were are the electronics going?

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I’m looking at a picture of your team’s chassis and yours aren’t that much smaller. Maybe it looks that way because our robot is small; try comparing the wheels to the battery.

Eheheh… we’re working on that. To my knowledge, pretty much directly above the systems visible here, but I could be wrong.

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One quick comment, if you work on the lengths in the steering linkage to get a higher percentage of ackerman, you’ll have tighter turns with less skidding. As in, an ideal ackerman steering system has the axes of the two bars attached to the wheels crossing at the midpoint of the rear axle at all times.

Otherwise very impressive, and very compact.

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wow, thats a nice drive system and nice wheels…

any idea of how fast its going to go?

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Looks more like a BattleBot than FRC to me… I dig!

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Can’t wait to see the flag holder…

Cool little robot… Nice job!

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6" Home Depot Lawnmower wheels, baby! That’s what I’m talkin about! (We have them too)

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Do you even have room for a ball handler or are you going to use that bot as a rabbit? Also, what are the dimensions of that thing?

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That robot needs to eat…she is SKINNY

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Just to get this out of the way, we’re not done yet. This is just our drive system, not the finished 'bot.

shock190, thank you for your advice. I personally didn’t understand what you meant, but I’ve passed it along to the drive team and they’re looking into it.

MasterRobot, thanks for the compliments. We’re geared at the moment to have a maximum of 14-15 feet per second, but we doubt we’ll actually drive that fast in competition.

Tim, I’m not sure what it means to look like a Battlebot as compared to looking like an FRC robot, but one of our engineers assures me it’s a good thing, so thanks.

Don, I’m fairly certain the flag holder will be attached to our manipulator (so it won’t look like an antenna on an RC car that flaps back when we move too fast). Thanks, we like it too.

galewind, I’m sure that the wheels are indeed the things about which you are talking… (You’ve been Grammar Nazi’d.) Thanks.

m3ch4num470r, yes, we plan to manipulate the trackballs, but in what fashion I won’t reveal just yet. (Rest assured, however, in the style of Moonraker, it will look completely ridiculous… hopefully until it starts being totally awesome.) The section shown here is about 13" wide by 27" deep, and less than 9" off the ground at its highest point.

Brandon, don’t worry… I’m sure it’ll put on lots of weight just in time for us to freak out the night before ship date.