Crate Cart
Minnesota has been fortunate for several years to have Amazon shipping teams to champs in Amazon semi trailers. Shipping your robot and pit supplies to champs as part of joint transportation with other teams solves many logistical issues, but can require some special considerations when packing your supplies.
General Advice
- Everything on Wheels
- Protect your stuff from runaway carts or falling materials from a neighbor
- Some trailers might leak in heavy rain or be briefly exposed to elements during unloading. Cover your robot with a tarp.
- Wrap everything in stretch wrap plastic and/or multiple ratchet straps
- Reinforce latches, doors, clasps with extra ratchet straps or tape
- If you plan to use a traditional shipping crate, similar to how robots were transported in the days of “Bag Day”, you likely won’t have a pallet jack to move the crate around.
- Everything you take will be in your pit. There won’t be a place to put extra packing crates or dollies at the venue.
- Strap your robot to the cart so it cannot shift around inside the crate.
Packing your Robot
KnightKrawler has created a novel approach to shipping our robot on the amazon trailer. The first year Amazon shipped robots, we put our old shipping crate on our robot cart and packed our robot in the crate as we did in the “old days”.
While the crate was perfect for protecting the robot, and the cart easily transported the crate, having a full shipping crate in your pit can be a pain to deal with, since it takes up so much space, even when fully disassembled.
In subsequent years, we have started building a crate around our cart. We use 2x4s and ½ plywood scraps left over from old Week Zero field elements. We make a box and screw it directly to our robot cart, which is made from wood. For teams with metal or narrow carts, a wooden base could be bolted to your cart, so that the bottom extends beyond the frame perimeter of your bot.
Our robot hangs over the sides of our car when the bumpers are installed. So we remove the bumpers and strap them to the top of the cart. Below are photos of the 2026 crate cart. The crate changes every year to accommodate the size of the robot.
The crate can be created so that the plywood simply creates a protective cage, but has multiple openings to make it easy to reach inside and connect tie down straps. Or you can find a way to secure your robot to your cart, before installing the crate surround, then add crate walls and roof that effectively surround the robot without any gaps. Making your crate from as little material as possible can make it easier to stash the pieces in your pit at Champs, but has the disadvantage of longer re-assembly when it is time to pack up to go home.
