The development of our fork
For the tasks in the Junior 2024 age group, we used a fork attached to the back of the robot. We were able to push the plants into the park, but the fork was simply too short to load the three horticultural starter sets. So there was never room for all three sets. So we extended the fork. We also widened them so that we could push the plants better. However, we then had the problem that the motor had too little power and the rods bent. We tried to solve this problem by reinforcing the individual rods, but it didn’t help.
Our next idea was to build a transmission from a small to a large wheel. That helped a lot, the engine had so much more power, and we kept this gear ratio until the Swiss final. The only change we made to the fork was two spikes to prevent the horticultural starter sets from sliding down the pole. One advantage of this fork is that it is not specialized for one task. We were also able to master the afternoon challenge at the Swiss final with this robot.
