If anyone out there has any Ideas, Links, Examples, Suggestions or Something other than what I mentioned in this parragraph, please feel free to leave a post. Any post that is posted will be gratefully considered. Thanx 4 reading this post.
P.S. Always open to new posts
-Vex Man-
Sometimes, if you can’t find an idea you can always look for a problem you have and try to fix it with a robot. For example, I had tons of duplicate pokemon cards, so I built an automated vending machine to sell the cards. But unfortunately, I never used it.
Here are some ideas:
[LIST]
*]Dragster (fast gear ratio with three motors on each side for torque)
*]all terrain vehicle (try to make suspension and use your tank treads)
*]a robot that goes up stairs
*]a robot that can roam around and see everything with a camera that has 2 degrees of freedom (two joints)
*]a two wheeled robot
*]a robot with a hinge after each set of wheels (like a snake!)
[/LIST]
How about something that shoots ping pong balls? Or something that grabs a tennis ball, drives it to a goal/basket and delivers it? I’m not very familiar with the Vexplorer kit, so I’m not sure if you have intake wheels. However, you could always use tank track for ball intake and delivery.
I’ve always wanted to do a mock-up bomb disposal robot. Low gear ratios for high power and low-bumps/jolts, with a long-reaching arm and camera, and maybe even a motor-triggered CO2 canister-powered water jet gun (like the kind they have on the Talon). With a CO2 cartridge (like what you’d use to pump up a bike tire on the road), you won’t get 1500 fps, but it’s still a cool project to show off at science fairs/to friends. It’s not all Vexplorer parts, but it’s most.
Since you have 6 wheels, you could try a Killough Platform (good video at the bottom). There are 3 wheels offset by 120 degrees from each other. Each individual wheel is made of two sideways regular wheels lined up with each other, and one is rotated 90 degrees from the other one. The whole wheel rolls both of these individual wheels sideways (like if you took a car wheel and flipped it end over end), but because there are two of them 90* from each other, one of them is always contacting the floor. Because they’re sideways, they can roll freely in the non-driven direction, effectively making an omniwheel. Usually, this kind of drive train is controlled by programming, so it won’t work very well to drive with the Vexplorer controller, but with practice, it should be quite fun!
You could also try making a gear-changing robot. You could either do this by a folding chassis with the front and middle wheels on different gears, or by moving gears themselves. Play around with it, it can be very educational.
Try modifying the claw to have 3 degrees of freedom (up and down, left and right, and rotate).
I have already made a robot out of my Vexplorer that has a turn table that the arm assembly sits on top and turns around. the only problem is that you will need three 15 x 5 plates that I believe don’t come in the metal kit. I am going to post the pictures eventually on here to show you what it looks like once i get them off my camera. other then the plates you have everthing to build it and it is pretty cool to use.
