ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Yesterday, it rained all day and we had two inches (5 cm) of flood around our house. So we designed this robot initially to go and fetch the mail so we don’t have to go in the rain and get our feet / shoes wet. I have not had a chance to test this outdoor properly yet - as it is still raining. But we did have 20 minutes break in the rain - long enough to take this picture: This is our first version of a NXT Amphibious vehicle. We tried to make it so that it can crawl over rocks like the Packbot [iRobot] / LNE [Brian Davis] / SCAT [222Doc] and also can track through 3" of water by raising its head and NXT using the two side arms while moving. We also want to add some buoyancy in the middle so that it can float and use the arms to 'swim' through the water and when it reaches the water edge, start climbing walking with the flippers and when it reaches flat ground use the flippers and tracks to move really fast. We also have plans to make it so that the long tail will be pivot...