Skipdiving Robotics

[Flag Captured]

The wheel chair was only £30

Mind sharing where you get your wheelchairs from? That's an absolute bargain that, been lucky to find one for less than £100 on eBay whenever I've looked

[daveimi]

Yeah it would be easy enough to drill the spike to put heads on it.

And yeah you have to mobilise a weapon rather than add a weapon to an already built platform.

[daveimi]

Sorry didn't see the post about the wheelchair! I just watched ebay for a few weeks and read through the local paper and stuff. I kept seeing them coming up for £150 or so and then noticed one that had most of the accessories missing. It's quite sad as the old dear had died and it had been found by the son who'd put it on ebay. You can buy wheelchair running gear on its own pretty cheap, but I wanted the partial framework to hold the drive together and give me a way of bolting it into a robot.

[plargen]

You could use the wheelchair ESC like they did on Gemini, have a look in the real robots mags

[daveimi]

with servo's pulling the joystick?

[daveimi]

I have some naff sketches of heavy! The basic gist is a grabbery thing. It will be less ramshackle than the sketches, I have been watching Youtube stuff a lot and there's a lot of flippers! I'd like to make bulkheads and put them together with an electric actuator powering the top plate. It's working title is "Croc" and the front edge will ride the ground lower and sort of grab hold of people and then I suppose put them in the pit or something less exciting. It isn't really to crush, in a sense, just grab. I'll paint it up with scales and eyes and all of that carry on. The movable top plate of the gob will have enough movement up to roll me back on my wheels if I get flipped. I'm hoping it will be something a bit different although the underpinnings will be pretty humble. Think wheelchair, SLA's, cheap speedos, a cheap lecky actuator and so on.

[Danny B]

I think you might be onto something with the whole 'grab and pit' technique. It works like a charm for TaN! One idea I might throw in is maybe a small, slow-moving toothed drum on the bottom lip to help drag opponents into the jaws.
An electric actuator is actually a really good idea, because unlike a pneumatic one, you get the same amount of thrust in both directions.

[daveimi]

Having looked at this I have a feeling this will be expensive and too hard to make. My normal technique of bolting rubbish together to see what I end up with is probably going to be better. It's served me well so far.

[plargen]

with servo's pulling the joystick?

yeah that what they did

[daveimi]

I'm not mega sure where to find a picture of the Gemini setup (don't have the mags), but I'm guessing it was a box holding the joystick with servos on each side? Then use coat hanger wire etc to connect them up?

[plargen]

i think the was a link to all the pages somewhere on the forum but if i cant find it i can always scan it in and post it

[plargen]

lol i already scanned it a while back

[daveimi]

Thanks! Will also have a Google see what else I can find. I could make that pretty easy.

[daveimi]

Been trawling the web and there are hoardes of people making rc robots from wheel chairs and using a Sabertooth 2x25! I'm getting a bit excited after reading how to dismantle the brake at the end of the motor, going to set-to and pull the wheel chair apart in the next few days lol.

[daveimi]

Thought I should put up a couple of pictures of my wheelchair motors. After an hours scrap with the wheelchair they're finally off. Unknown to me was the fact the six bolts that clamped the motor assemblies to the frame also held the gearboxes together. I whipped the six bolts out only to spend the next hour trying to work out how it all went back together. Needless to say they're all back together and ready to have the electromagnetic brakes taken off the end and the inner tubes straightened up in the tyres. That will be another riveting evening in front of the telly. Even though it's boring stuff I good about the fact that everything is getting checked and cleaned up as I go so there's no nasty surprises further down the line.