This accessory kit for the Balboa Chassis can be used for a variety of different applications, from a bumper cage for protecting your electronics to skids on which it can drive around to arms that you can mount sensors on. The parts for this kit are already included with the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot Kit.

Overview

Protect your Balboa robot from falls with this bumper cage kit, which includes:

• four bumper skids
• four bumper cage cross bars
• two bumper skid spacers
• twelve 12 mm M3 screws and nuts

The pieces for this kit are already included in the Balboa 32U4 Robot Kit, but we have made them available separately for those who need replacements or want a set to use with the Balboa Chassis Kit, which does not include the bumper cage. The bumper cage skids mount to the side of the Balboa chassis or stability conversion add-on and can be arranged in a wide variety of positions, configurations, and orientations, enabling a wide variety potential uses. The primary purpose of the bumper kit is to absorb an impact before your electronics do, which is especially important for balancing applications, where hard falls can be a frequent occurrence. In addition to this, they can be positioned to prop your robot at just the right angle for it to be able to kick itself back up to vertical, or you can just use them as skids for your Balboa to drive around on.

One of the many possible configurations of the bumper cage on the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot.	One of the many possible configurations of the bumper cage on the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot.
The Balboa 32U4 can drive around on its side while resting on the bumper cage skids.	One of the many possible configurations of the bumper cage on the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot (lengthened with Stability Conversion accessory).

The bumper cage skids and cross bars include a number of holes and slots sized to work with #4 and M3 screws, which gives you a lot of flexibility in how you can put them together and what you can mount to them (see the bumper cage kit dimension diagram (152k pdf) for more information). The following example shows them holding a QTR-8RC reflectance sensor array in front of the Balboa 32U4 Robot with the Stability Conversion accessory:

For more information on this bumper cage kit, including the chassis angles that can be achieved with the various mounting positions and orientations, see the bumper cage section of the Balboa 32U4 Balancing Robot user’s guide. Assembly of the bumper cage kit is explained in the assembly instructions in that same user’s guide.