This year is RWE’s final year, and we wanted to make it count. After last year’s fiasco with a non-functional robot, and covid the two years prior, we knew that this was our last chance. We originally planned to build a 4 wheel drive drum spinner, but due to machining difficulty and this year’s reduced budget, decided to revisit last year’s concept. This year we are focusing on making the robot as compact as possible, and have it be highly maneuverable. This meant we are using 4wd as well as closed-loop controllers with ODrive Pros. This should allow us to have an extremely precise amount of control input, and because of the nature of ODrives, there should be no side-to-side drift when driving forward. This should allow us to be able to outmaneuver opponents and strike them with our vertical spinner. To allow for 4wd, we are using belts and will have a tank-style drive, similar to what Botceps had in the past. We are also using hinged wedges that are very popular amongst all weight classes because it allows them to scrape the ground and get under other robots. At this point, we have most of our design completed and over winter break we plan to finish weight reduction, and finalize a couple smaller details, and hopefully be ready for a design review mid-break. We plan to start machining in the middle of February and have our robot complete in March, this should allow us to make some last minute changes if we find issues during assembly. Hopefully this year will be a departure from the past few and our robot will be highly competitive.
