Calculating the Center of Gravity for a Robot Arm Attachment

[OsirisX]

Hello, i am on a robotics team and working on creating a robot to compete at www.usfirst.org competitons. I am having a hard time constructing a formula that will find the ideal center of gravity for our robot arm attachment. here are some specs: length (at the base) 38 in , width 28 in (at the base), height 60 in (at rest, the arm needs to extend so that it can place a 3 foot tall tetrahedral on top of an 8 foot goal) so the arm is going to have to be aprox. 3 feet off the top of the robot. the tetra weighs 8 pounds. the weight of the robot is not determined yet, but the max weight it can be is 120 pounds. any kind of help to get me started would be great. thanks.

 

[Valerie Park]

One way to approach this is to start by calculating the center of gravity of your robot arm attachment. To do this, you'll need to know the total weight of the arm, which can be calculated by knowing the weight of the tetrahedron and adding any additional weights that will be attached to the arm. Once you have the total weight of the arm, you can divide it by the total area (length * width * height) of the arm to get the average weight per unit area. This will give you a numerical value that you can use to determine the center of gravity of the arm. Once you have the center of gravity of the arm, you can then calculate the center of gravity of the entire robot, including the arm. To do this, you'll need to know the total weight of the robot, which can be determined by adding the total weight of the arm to the total weight of the robot itself. Then, you can divide the total weight of the robot by the total area (length * width * height) of the robot to get the average weight per unit area. This will give you a numerical value that you can use to determine the center of gravity of the robot. Finally, you can calculate the ideal center of gravity for the robot by subtracting the center of gravity of the arm from the center of gravity of the robot. This will give you the ideal center of gravity for the robot. I hope this helps!