The new shooter was modified to better mimick the trajectory of the original shooter, which has been used in all our competitions even though broken. The main change between the new and the old shooters is that in the new one the spring is held at its end with aluminum instead of crackable wood.
The cap bull sticks are mounted with axle hubs now to prevent rotating.
To make the robot faster, the wheels might be changed from 4″ to 6″ wheels. However, it will be difficult to gear the 6″ Omni wheels with the previous gear ratio of 4 : 3 (32:24) for speed. This is because the only sprockets that can be directly attached to these 6″ Omni wheels (when sprockets can be directly attached to a wheel and not through some adaptor, it results in the strongest possible connection while also creating the least lateral distance, which is good for staying within 18 inches) do not have the standard 0.250″ pitch that is on our current Actobotics sprockets. The drive wheels, the 6″ Actobotics stealth wheels can be attached easily to sprockets with the standard 0.250″ pitch, if the new chassis were to continue to be 2 motor 4 wheel drive, the front and back wheels wouldn’t use the same chain. Even though this wouldn’t matter because its the sprocket ratios that have to match, not the chain pitches, it is difficult to attach an Actobotics sprocket and an Andymark sprocket with different hole patterns on the same axis of the motor while not taking much lateral room. Hence, the new chassis may just be 2 motor 2 wheel drive. We have tried this 2 motor 2 wheel back drive earlier in the season, however it was direct drive and the wheels were 4″; that robot was somewhat fast, had fast turns, but it couldn’t go very straight, and since it couldn’t go forward or turn consistently, it was put aside because it wasn’t accurate enough for the original autonomous path that required the robot to go forward, turn, go forward, back, turn, etc. However, the current autonomous does not require nearly as much precision since the robot utilizes the border to go straight.
So the decision for the future (super regional) robot is to use a 2 motor 2 wheel back driven robot with four 6″ wheels. Also, the back wheels won’t be direct driven because there needs to be room in the back for the wide sweeper. The question now is how should the back wheels be geared, 1 to 1, 4 to 3, or 3:2? The whole purpose of the chassis change is to make the robot faster, so would a 6″ robot geared 1 to 1 still be faster than a 4″ geared 4 to 3?
So even if the new robot is geared 1 to 1, it will still be slightly faster than the old one.
Pros of new 6″ Robot:
- Much faster turns
- Slightly faster straights
- Less complex
- More options for motor placement
Cons:
- Barely heavier
- Robot base in contact with ground has shrunk
- Center of gravity slightly higher
And if we want to go even faster:
