2020 FRC Robot

The finalized drive base design used two speed shifting gearboxes designed by me, and used four wheels per side linked by chain. The climb mechanisms were actuated by pneumatics to rotate upwards, and were extend by custom two stage gearboxes also designed by me.

The climb gearboxes were single speed outfitted with a pneumatic brake to hold the robot in the air in the event of power loss. Each had the ability to raise the robot two feet in the air in around a second, with one per side for redundancy.

The drive gearboxes were two speed with a pneumatic shifter. They were geared for around 8ft/s in low gear or 16ft/s in high. One gearbox was used to drive a set of four 6in wheels on both sides of the robot through lengths of chain.

Building from lessons learned in 2019, I decided to cantilever the axles on the new drive base. This made swapping wheels far easier, which consequently opened the door to use of high traction treaded wheels. This in combination with the shifting gearboxes made us formidable playing defense and hard to push while scoring.

Left - the robot's fully collapsed starting position

Right - the robot with all of it's points of actuation fully extended