Tulips and Robots appear in Holland Michigan

• April
• 27

6:23 pm Robotics, Technology

It’s Tulip Time in Holland Michigan!

Ok enough on that subject. It’s also FIRST robotics competition season across the country. This year 3 teams from the Holland area are heading to Atlanta for the national championship. Good luck!

My own challenge, to develop a TableBot from my VEX kit is progressing nicely.

TableBot version two features:

• Small Wheelbase
• Two forward sensors

In order to make the chasis so small, I offset the drive motors. This was done by driving the front left wheel and the rear right wheel. This is counter to common automotive engineering, but the use of two motors allows us to do this without sacrifice. I have no idea if this makes sense for driving mechanics, but it sure seems to work fine for this bot.

The wheels are so close together, that the bot can probably get by with one forward edge sensor once again. Perhaps one that has a large “thumb print”, allowing it to sense the edge left or right with a single sensor. further tuning of the program can improve performance as well.

NEXT –

I will continue with programming adjustments to see if we can make this bot just a little smoother.