Challenges: Drag Race and Tractor Pull

We have been assigned a new challenge, and this time around its less about using the sensors and all about the speed. We have to design a robot that will be able to cover the distance of a 3 meter straight track in the shortest amount of time. This challenge comes after we finished the gear worksheets, so obviously we will need to find a gear combination that will be optimum for speed.

At first we planned to create a robot with a gear train of two 40t gears and two 8 t gears...(even three at a point in time...that machine would truly have been monstrous) however my partner, Hakyoon, and I soon came to realize that with the minimal time allotted us, our robot simply wouldn't be able to support all of that extra weight on the wheel axles...a true shame. In the end we opted for a simple 1:5 gear ratio added a wheelie bar...In the first drag race our robot went berserk and 'unintentionally' using little lego 'spikes' protruding from its wheels rammed into the opponent and flipped it...even though we had to re-run the drag race (surprisingly beating the competitor's robot with the same gearing) our robot...truly was demonstrating its inner beastliness.




The tractor pull challenge works much in the opposite direction. We will have to design a robot that can push/pull the greatest amount of weight across 50cm in the shortest amount of time.
The gearing for this robot will be hard to balance between losing too much speed while still giving the robot lots of torque.

In addition to the modified gearing, our robot will most likely need a slight revamp to its actual structure in order to push large amounts of weight. The weight of the robot shouldn't be much of a problem, so my partner and I will most likely try to place additional weight on the driving wheels of our robot so that it has more traction and won't slip when pushing the weights. Some other attachments such as 'steering rods' may be placed out in front of the robot so that the object being pushed doesn't slip away.