[Robotgroup] Drive a Droid proposal... How to detect the "fence"?

[Vern Graner]

Def Egge wrote:
 > And [insert your favorite deity's name here] forbid that a
 > combination of juvenile operator, perimeter, etc. leave the
 > robot in an unbalanced condition ... a 225+ pound pile of
 > hardware toppling over on a lesser pile of flesh would be
 > one Helluva way to end one year (or start the next one).

I spoke with Rick and he told me the droid will be in 3-wheel "tripod" 
stance making it very stable and much more difficult to "topple".

Also, a combination of slow movement speed (enforced by the speed 
controller) and having a low center of gravity (batteries physically 
placed at a very low point in the robot) makes this rather unlikely.

Based on reading the mailing list for the R2D2 builders club (for a 
little over a year now), the only damage in crowds is usually the 
*robot* being damaged by the crowd, not vice versa!

There are occasional reports of R2 running over (or into) someone's foot 
but other than that, even with R2 venturing directly into crowded venues 
(i.e. maker fair, robo-games, mall events etc) the incidences are 
extremely rare.

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" ©VLG