What is possible with the robotic parts, Thread

[GoldForest]

I decide that a mass thread showing or telling what's possible with the new parts would be helpful, especially for new players or novice players. Anyone and everyone is free to contribute, and I'll try to update the OP with other people's ideas as much as possible, but I tend to forget to do things, so check through the thread as the your problem or the idea your seeking may be here. 

Functional ideas:

-Swing Wings: Swing Wings are possible with the new parts. You'll have to use the servos

-Mass Solar Arrays: Mass Solar Arrays, such as the ones on the ISS, are possible. You need to use a combination of telescopic pistons to achieve the effect.

-Props for planes, helicopters, and jets: These are possible, but not very good as physics tends to break down the higher the speed. For Prop planes, I suggest using nothing but the empty extending tube parts(Forgot their name, derp) as the body. Hide lots of RTGS inside with a few batteries as back up. For Helicopters, a countra-rotating or a two nacelle design is needed for any real lift. I would suggest going quad copter for this. For jet high-bypass turbines, these are easy and simple to make, but the fan blades start acting weird once the rpms get high. They do add some speed, but not a lot.




Aesthetic Idea: 

-Drive Shafts: Drive Shafts are possible, but purely aesthetic. To achieve this, use these parts in this order: Rotor, hinge, hinge set 90 degrees to the first one, shaft made up of anything you want, hinge set to 90 degrees, hinge, rotor.

 

-Piston powered wheels: Piston powered wheels are not possible through the piston alone. You will need to add a rotor to the wheel and have it turn everything. 

[Fireheart318]

Don't forget about boats!

I managed to make a steamboat-style boat reach 21m/s after a few attempts. I'd imagine people will be making aircraft carriers for Eve at some point.

Edit - Full disclosure, I'm using a USI reactor to power this thing. It uses about 8(?) Electric Charge a second, so you'd need a pretty decent power source

Edited June 10, 2019 by Fireheart318

[Geschosskopf]

The robotic parts have quite a few inherent limitations (speed, floppiness, power consumption) that put the kibosh on a lot of grandiose schemes.  However, you can still to quite a lot with them.  It's just that apart from a few applications, most of the things that you can make and do work can be done better without the robotic parts, so are more for entertainment.

Off the top of my head, here is how I see a lot of the things I've tried to do.

Practical Applications:

• Cranes, lifts, and articulated docking mechanisms for light loads in low-G situations.
• Helicopters even up to Mk 3 size and rather smaller autogyros.
• Tilt-jet VTOLs
• Folding rovers and aircraft to fit in cargo bays and fairings
• Simple articulated suspensions for rough terrain rovers

Borderline Practicality

• Propeller engines for airplanes and tilt-rotors
• Screw propulsion for smallish boats and subs
• Swing-wing airplanes

Impractical but Entertaining

• Walking rovers
• Complex, active rover suspensions (including lowrider hopping)
• Paddlewheel boats
• Home-made rover wheels
• Piston engines

[Guest]

I’m still designing and testing a Mun mission that squeezes a heap of stuff into a cylinder shape thanks to collapsible robotics. (Mun Lander, Kerbin Re-Entry Vehicle, 2 Rovers with expandable wheelbases and deployment system, a couple of flat-pack probes... but I haven’t worked that part out quite yet) I’m trying to accomplish it with minimal clipping  

It already looks awesome! I’ll post a pic when I get home!

[Jestersage]

So far I have this confirm:

- Large hinges are more stable
- Whether the G12 hinge is equivalent to M25 for stability is a different matter

[Guest]

Thats the mission I was talking about that uses a lot of collapsible robotics. The mission plan has evolved slightly to be unmanned but you get the idea  

[nhnifong]

It should be possible to save some dv on an Eve ascent with electric propellers. 
I know the props cannot make much thrust, but I'm counting on large folding fixed wings and a gradual ascent.

Maybe optimistic but I expect to be able to reach 30km altitude on electric propulsion and then reach orbit with a 3500 dv rocket. Payload 1000kg.

[AstroDoc]

Playing the game, there have only been a couple of times when I wished I had hinges etc. One of them related to ore

Quite some time ago, when ore and ore-conversion were introduced into the game, I explored the option for a time. I would have a rover with lots of electrical power and the drills and the storage tank do the drilling/collecting (I wanted a precise drilling site), I put the ore conversion ship and associated holding tanks in orbit, and I had a transfer ship with a storage tank to move the ore between the 2. One significant drawback was the need to do the land-based docking/transferring on a flat surface, as I had arranged/tested for it to be done on a flat surface near the launchpad back on Kerbin. I wished for a more flexible docking option

Thanks to rotation devices, pistons, and hinges, I now have that flexibility

The picture shows a transfer ship landed/crashed at a deliberately odd angle on the launchpad (to make an interesting target for my rover's docking port), and a drilling/collecting rover with a docking port on a robotic arm

 

[KerikBalm]

On 6/10/2019 at 5:47 PM, Geschosskopf said:

Practical Applications:

• Cranes, lifts, and articulated docking mechanisms for light loads in low-G situations.
• Helicopters even up to Mk 3 size and rather smaller autogyros.
• Tilt-jet VTOLs
• Folding rovers and aircraft to fit in cargo bays and fairings
• Simple articulated suspensions for rough terrain rovers

So far my attempts at building cranes has been in the impractical but entertaining category... I suppose it may work better on Mun, and with light loads as you say.

I already reduced the fuel and ore load 50% to simulate lower gravity (for a mod world of just over 0.5G)

It was made to deploy from a my 3 cargobay. The flexing is strong... I may come back to it and try to reduce it. I'd get a lot more height if the flexing was less.

So far my helos have been only borderline practicality, but the tilt engine VTOLs have done great.

I say limited practicality, because I struggle to get over 20 m/s with them (although I have seen much higher, btu they were pretty barebones).

This one could fit in a mk3 cargobay, and carried a full science suite... still, a rover would probably be faster... At least this can cross water.

... changed the wheels:

 

 

Quote

Borderline Practicality

• Propeller engines for airplanes and tilt-rotors
• Screw propulsion for smallish boats and subs
• Swing-wing airplanes

I think I'm finding prop engines more practical than helicopters (although, they are kind of the same). My tilt rotor designs seem to be at least equal in practicality with standard contra rotating rotor helos.

My biggest problem is a bug with control surface pitch when rotors are made tiltable, and using deploy vs undeploy to adjust pitch )once per revolution, the pitch snaps to a new pitch then moves back to what it should be).

Subs have always been somewhat practical if there is O2... there's just nothing to do with them. (no science benefit for touching the surface under water). We can now mod surface features under water to visit.

Old "airbreathing" sub:

It could drive up the ramp, jet thrust helped.

Now I can use them on Eve and Tekto, or modded Duna with oceans (but no O2), etc... So far I haven't seen any as fast as the old jet subs though.

I haven't tried to optimize for speed yet, nor tried to recover them, but robotics should make them easier to recover, so wheels may not be needed at all if using a cargobay that opens from the bottom..

But I'm fully ready for mechanics that allow for extra science to be gained by visiting sea floors (scan-able surface features, "landed" instead of "splashed" science if you are touching the bottom, etc)

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

So far my attempts at building cranes has been in the impractical but entertaining category... I suppose it may work better on Mun, and with light loads as you say.

I think a 4-legged (wheeled) gantry crane that straddles the load and lifts it vertically with a piston would probably work better than an arm with a counterweight.  You could even make the central docking port fixed on the crossbar and have 4 pistons, 1 in each left, do the lifting/lowering, for more strength.

[KerikBalm]

but will that fit in a mk3 cargobay?

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

I think a 4-legged (wheeled) gantry crane that straddles the load and lifts it vertically with a piston would probably work better than an arm with a counterweight.  You could even make the central docking port fixed on the crossbar and have 4 pistons, 1 in each left, do the lifting/lowering, for more strength.

You almost exactly described the crane I made today. I tried the counterweight pivoting arm kind first but it was embarrassing saggy.

3 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

but will that fit in a mk3 cargobay?

I will get out of bed to post some pics of mine >_<, is mk3 2.5m? mine won’t fit in that but it might squeeze into that big shuttle-type cargo bay... possibly... tbh I haven’t started to iterate too much yet, I’ve been mainly trying to make something that works well. And this things is a beast. Gimme a sec...

[Guest]

It's kinda scary actually @_@!

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by Guest

[KerikBalm]

well.... I wanted something that could top load cargo into mk3 cargo bays of dropships,/shuttles. Thus  side clearance and height are required... coupled with being able to go where the dropship does... I think its too ambitious

[Guest]

1 minute ago, KerikBalm said:

well.... I wanted something that could top load cargo into mk3 cargo bays of dropships,/shuttles. Thus  side clearance and height are required... coupled with being able to go where the dropship does... I think its too ambitious

Don’t give up! I like the conventional cranes better! I just failed to make one  

[Jestersage]

Another thing I found out: If your hinges suddenly collapse, don't naturally assume it was due to the weight they need to support It can just be the battery,

[sgt_flyer]

In impractical but entertaining, you can have continuous tracks made of series of hinges, looped with a strut  - all that powered by sprocket wheels  (the tracks have still to be kept in shape prior to decoupling) - limited mainly by the track sections impact's speed, and physics cpu usage (with generally around 45 parts per track... it's quite taxing ^^)

[dxeh]

i've seen some guys make awesome rovers with robotic parts. Using hinges and hydraulics as suspension..

i cant get them to work my self though... ;'(

If anyone has any tips. enlighten me!

[Guest]

There should be a robotic suspension thread!  

(Mine attempts have failed to be awesome too  )

Edited June 24, 2019 by Guest

[Aegolius13]

Just had an interesting idea for use on a VTOL, or any other craft where the COM is a big deal.  You can attach something relatively heavy to a piston (i.e., a smaller fuel tank inside a cargo bay), and use the piston to move that weight fore and aft in order to trim COM.

[Klapaucius]

I've had fun testing the capabilities of the KAL 1000 controller. I've built 2 planes that fly exclusively using the controller, with no use of the WASD keys.

 

Viktor, bendable aircraft:

 

 

and Milo, Flying Centipeded Plane:

 

 

[Ben J. Kerman]

The Breaking Ground DLC, besides Tweakscale and KAS, is the most important thing that allows me to build cranes and other construction equipment. The KAL-1000 controller is very important for setting up the outriggers, while I use the rotation servos for slewing, the alligator hinges for luffing (Moving the boom up and down. In real life, they use a hydraulic cylinder for luffing, but I have trouble hooking that up correctly. That's why I just use hinges.), - I have found a way to use actual hydraulic cylinders for luffing the booms on my mobile cranes! - and the telescoping hydraulic cylinders for telescopic booms.

Scroll to the bottom of the above thread to see my cranes. Check out my YouTube channel for videos of some of the cranes, and more. I'm sorry I didn't put the pictures directly on this post, but a lot of them are on the thread linked.

 

Edited July 14, 2021 by Ben J. Kerman

[herbal space program]

Propellers have definitely been a game-changer for me on Eve:

The solar-powered prop plane on the left, docked to its orbital tug in the image, accommodates three Kerbals and a bunch of science experiments, makes Kerbin orbit as a single stage, can re-enter the atmosphere on Eve without any heat shielding, can  land and take off any number of times on Eve to gather/transmit science, and can then reach ~22km altitude on Eve on the props before jettisoning the wings and flying back to orbit on the Vectors. I suspect that a stripped-down version might even be able to SSTO on Eve, but I have not pursued that yet.

[Single stage to ocean]

Can ssto with less wings, less propellors, and some liquid fuel+nervs. 100% possible to ssto.

[Ben J. Kerman]

Want to know what is possible with the robotic parts?

I got your answer right here! 

(P.S: I hope you like it!)