Void v7.0
Specs:
Weight : 151g
Dimensions : roughly 140x100x45mm
Wheels : 38mm Diameter, 3D printed hub, Foam Wheel, Dycem.
Drive Motors : Pololu HP 100:1 Gearmotors
Drive ESCs : Pete Waller's Option B
Weapon Servo : Park HPX F
Reciever : Spektrum AR6300
Power : 12.6v 150mah 3-cell Lipo pack
Chassis : 3D printed
Armor : 1mm Polycarbonate, 0.8mm Titanium
Status : Upgraded
Dimensions : roughly 140x100x45mm
Wheels : 38mm Diameter, 3D printed hub, Foam Wheel, Dycem.
Drive Motors : Pololu HP 100:1 Gearmotors
Drive ESCs : Pete Waller's Option B
Weapon Servo : Park HPX F
Reciever : Spektrum AR6300
Power : 12.6v 150mah 3-cell Lipo pack
Chassis : 3D printed
Armor : 1mm Polycarbonate, 0.8mm Titanium
Status : Upgraded
Information:
I'd recently taken another short break from ants - I hadn't had any success in a long while, and I just wanted to step back and re-evaluate the situation, clear my ant-brain, etc. I'd been to a few events in the interim, where Pete Waller had been kind enough to allow me to drive one of his ants (thanks Pete!). Void 7.0 was in the works for a very long time, ever since void 6.1 was made. I must've gone through at least 5 completely different designs - including pneumatics and a pump (a throwback to Void 4.0), a short fat design (similar to Red Eye), a tracked wedge design, and some others. I decided that as Void was my main robot, I wanted it to be strong, fast, controllable, a good all-rounder, rather than focusing in one area. But I couldn't bring myself to just make a standard flipper bot without anything 'special' going on under the hood, no matter how well it was made. One constant issue I'd had with most of the previous iterations of Void was a problem with getting good ground clearance at the front, so I started considering ways to get around this. Again, I went through a lot of different design ideas before I finally settled on trying a vacuum pump in the base of the robot, to hold the robot to the floor, making the front of it flatter, and also making it much more efficient at getting under other robots. I also designed it to be shorter, steeper, and lower than any other previous version, to make the centre of gravity lower and the chassis much lighter. I also stopped doing the whole components-inside-the-wheels-thing I'd done on all previous versions, as I believe with how much smaller components had gotten, I could get away without, which allowed me to have thick foam wheels to increase traction, which would be important with suction. Other points of interest on this bot were the armour - .8mm ti all over the front, making it almost invulnerable to spinners (depending on my driving!), and I also started using Pete Wallers Speed Controllers, which are absolutely excellent, and made wiring up the bot a lot easier. The entire chassis and wheel cores were also Rapid Prototyped, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone with the CAD skills to make them. The site is Shapeways, and you can upload any file to them and they'll print it out and send it to you (for a very reasonable cost) in a material similar to Nylon, which is very strong and flexible. It made making the chassis a lot easier, and the end result was stronger, lighter, and easier to put together. I also planned to use a HPXF for the flipper, upped to 12v through use of an external H-bridge.
Unfortunately, for this version, I didn't have time to get the vacuum pump working, so I ran at AWS30 with the pump still inside the robot, but non-operational. I also didn't have time to get the overvolted version of the flipper working, so I had to run it at a lower voltage which gave me some very weak flips and problems self righting. However, despite these drawbacks, this version of Void did excellently, coming 2nd in AWS30, the best I've ever done in an AWS event. I need to get the pump working, get the flipper voltage up, and make some other very minor adjustments and I think it'll really be a force to be reckoned with!
Unfortunately, for this version, I didn't have time to get the vacuum pump working, so I ran at AWS30 with the pump still inside the robot, but non-operational. I also didn't have time to get the overvolted version of the flipper working, so I had to run it at a lower voltage which gave me some very weak flips and problems self righting. However, despite these drawbacks, this version of Void did excellently, coming 2nd in AWS30, the best I've ever done in an AWS event. I need to get the pump working, get the flipper voltage up, and make some other very minor adjustments and I think it'll really be a force to be reckoned with!