Skipdiving Robotics

[daveimi]

Right well before Sunday thought I'd put up a picture and a video. Been having a drive of robot properly and discovered an epic fail. The robot is made from a maplin project box a mate was chucking out and it looked about right. Upon building my stuff into it and cutting wheel slots I discovered the width was too thin to get both motors and gearboxes end to end so I ended up having to stagger them a la Little Hitter et al. The knock on effect of this was that the battery then didn't fit properly, and I've had to put a round head bolt under the back corner to sort of prop the robot up. The battery over the bolt makes it dig in and so if it accelerates hard it pulls to one side. Accellerating gradually = no problem.

Am a bit gutted. And it's not invert-able. Which is just fab. Anyway, I actually haven't set this one on fire so am gonna see if there are any spinners about on Sunday to chuck it in with. If the concept of an ally can with a lid works I'm gonna get on to the fabrication place to make me a proper chassis with lid and move my stuff into that. I've also discovered that the 1000rpm gear motor shafts are pretty fragile and have bent a couple, dunno if anyone else has the same problem? Below I stuck up a picture of the insides.