Robot Challenge

Last night I was able to complete the second part of Spike, adding the tail. Construction was relatively easy, until near the end. Attaching the entire tail assembly to the robot base took some figuring out to determine where the attachment is made. And then connecting some of the wires is difficult once all the pieces are surrounding the base NXT. I think they could have done some more user testing to avoid issues like that with some minor re-designs, or re-arranging of instructions.

Still the tail action is impressive, how it bends down as the scissor mechanism extends. Quite clever. Unfortunately, my Spike does not travel in a straight line. It veers slowly to the right, so it never hits the ball that the instructions tells you to place in front of it on the test pad. No amount of checking if the legs are aligned helped on that score.

Have you gotten your Spike to go straight? How?