Servo - May 2009

THIS MONTH:

Who’s Vex?

afew months ago we dismantled our beloved Vex robot, the

Hungry Hungry Hippo (see the July 2005 issue for the exploits of this talented robot) to provide parts for the Surveyor Drive Base. Actually, Vex parts have made it onto a number of our robotics projects, including our ROV for the 2008 MATE Competition, our multimedia Scribbler artist, and several others. Now our once proud Vex robot has been reduced to an immobile pile of parts, and it certainly deserves better than that. Its mechanical body may be no more, but the Vex brain is still alive and well with the appropriately named Easy C programming language and a fun radio controller. All it needed

was a new body.

Calling All

Robot Skeletons

One of our favorite robotics projects of yore that has somehow managed to avoid a mention in this column is Protobot. FIRST Team 1079 built Protobot in preparation for the 2005 season (Triple Play) out of remnants from older FIRST kits and our 2004 FIRST contender Modos (for more on the adventures of Team 1079 and Modos check out the September–December 2004 issues).

Team 1079 had a crop of new recruits that year, and the idea behind Protobot was to show new team

members that building a robot need not be a daunting task. We also wanted to try out the stock frame that came with the FIRST kit. In previous seasons, we had a custom aluminum frame welded, but the kit frame offered a much faster alternative that appeared equally efficacious in terms of structural integrity.

Protobot also provided an open forum to try out some drive train designs that we may not have been adventurous enough to tackle during a regular six week FIRST build season. The basis for Protobot’s drive train was the gear train from Modos. The drive train employed two CIM motors with a two stage gear reduction. We