Panthera: A Climbing Lego Tank
Panthera came about because of a flash of inspiration I had while bored at school. I had been experimenting with a combination drive and suspension consisting of several small treads that can pivot around a point. Suddenly, I though of a way to put such treads on a tank. If I placed them at the front and back of the tank's treads, they would aid greatly in climbing. I drew up a detailed blueprint of this tank, as well as a frame-by-frame sequence showing it climb over stuff. This is a picture of my drawings:
The picture quality is quite good, so feel free to zoom in and read my notes.
When I got home, I hastily made a video of Flash Flood, which was my current tank, and then I built a prototype of Panthera. Soon after that, I tested Panthera on stairs and added some clips of it to Flash Flood's video. At that point I hadn't named it, though I was thinking of naming it after some big cat because of its four paw-like rubber treads. When I discovered that all four of the commonly known big cats (Lions, Tigers, Jaguars and Leopards) belong to genus Panthera, I decided that should be the name of this tank.
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