Static Buildup

Static buildup is a really destructive problem. It can cause your robot to brick itself in the middle of a match. To see if you have static buildup, check the following symptoms:

• Your cortex or motor encoders keep on resetting
• You get a shock when touching the robot after driving it for a while.
• Your robot stops working after running into the perimeter or anything else metal.

It is caused because the metal on the robot is rubbing against the ground, causing electrons to build up on the robot, until a sudden discharge causes our electronics to restart. It can cause your robot to brick itself during the middle of a match, so if you have this problem, it should be a top priority to fix. In the 2016-2017 year, we lost several early matches due to static buildup. It was dubbed, “Sudden robot death syndrome.”

The easiest patch that can be used for testing purposes is to squirt your field with a water bottle. This temporarily fixes the problem by causing fewer electrons to transfer from the ground to your robot. Though, to be clear, THIS IS TEMPORARY.

To completely fix this problem, the robot needs to be grounded. A piece of metal needs to have contact from the robot’s metal frame to the ground at all times on the field. This prevents a charge from building up on the frame by allowing a pathway to the ground.

In the unusual case (2016-2017 had this) that the robot does not have a contiguous pathway for charge to flow from any major part to any other major part this will not entirely fix the problem. For instance, if you have a claw that is insulated from the rest of the frame by plastic spacers, just grounding the frame may not solve the problem! One must also either ground the claw or create a pathway for charge to flow from the claw to the frame which in turn will flow to the ground.