Our Robot is very near completion. The highlights are a fully functional two speed transmission, allowing us to switch gears on the fly from 9.8 ft per second high gear, to a 5 ft per second low gear for pushing. We also have four suction cups positioned on the bottom of our robot to allow us to stick to the HDPE and a box bashing arm. We plan to be 14 inches tall to allow us to fit under the bar. Here’s a pic(minus the suction cups, I’ll post an updated picture later). Check our our website for more information and pictures.
A quick note about those tires… We used the same ones last year. We noticed that on the carpet, they don’t have a whole lot of traction. (Well…they do…but you can get more) Wear them down a little so you have more surface area and make perpendicular grooves in them (so you have some nice 90-degree angles). To make the grooves, we duct-taped three hacksaw blades together and sawed down each grove. We had a noticeable amount of gained traction. Just a thought (Grooves will also help a lot on the mesh, too)
Maybe you already had plans to modify the tires…or not. But this goes to any team that has never used these wheels before or would just like to get a little more out of them (We ditched these wheels for the wider ones :P)
We used those tires last year too, we cut grooves like evulish said and they grooves worked great,
to lose some weight you can mill out the part of the wheel in between the outside and the hub, be sure to go around the bolt holes, just pull the two pieces apart off of the rubber and you can cut it with a jigsaw. It will cut out about 25% of the weight.
in the video it looks like all four wheels are lifted off the ground- does this actually happen? I seem to remember a rule that says you can’t do that… hmm- looks in rule manual
Definatley a very cool robot. If you take a look at all the videos the light seems to be retracted into the body in all but the suction video. Since they only need the light down while getting under the bar, I’m sure the reason they kept it retracted is because of how annoying it is ;o)
yea the light goes up and down so we can get under the bar. The suction cups lift the whole robot off the ground… I don’t think it’s against the rules?
I looked through the rules and I couldn’t find it. That rule wouldn’t make much sense either…lifting your robot up is no big deal, and plenty of teams are going to have suction cups…
(Grooves will also help a lot on the mesh, too)
