Robotic Horseshoe Pitcher

Sounds like a fun project. to bad were so far away i'd like to do something completely useless like that ;o) Best of luck to you. Hey maybe you should do a contest where many people try to built one and in six months they compete.

Interesting! One of my ol' buddies has been having a horse shoe tournament every year near the end of June for the past twenty-five years or so, making me want to build one too.

Medieval warriors built trebuchets to throw horses (dead and diseased) over fortress walls to infect the enemy and kill them off slowly after being thwarted by their attempts to knock down the walls with boulders. Maybe a modification of a trebuchet design would work to pitch horse shoes "underhanded" instead of "overhanded."

My nephew, my brother and I recently built a trebuchet with a 3 foot arm to throw golf balls over 150 feet, and after said nephew fiddled with it for a few days getting the counterweight to payload and long arm to short arm ratios tuned up, he was able to throw one over 250 feet.

Look up trebuchet on the internet and notice that the payload is dragged along the ground (so to speak) by a sling connected to the throwing arm before the missile is flung over the whole contraption toward its target. There's no reason that the horse shoe can't be released to be thrown toward a target much sooner, just after it leaves the ground, mimicking a human horse shoe pitcher.

Thanks for the input. It takes the design in a totally different direction. I was concerned about having to do a lot of machine work that might alter the "low budget" aspects of the project. What do you suppose the consistent accuracy of such a device would be. I would think the sling would introduce some inherent inaccuracy into the mix. The major objective is to get the device to be very consistent in it's accuracy.

Upon further research into the trebuchet idea I find that the inaccuracy of the trebuchet method of hurling ballistic loads is not going to yield the consistency we desire. We are looking to build something with about a 98% accuracy in throwing ringers. The accuracy of the best human pithcers is somewhere above 80-85%. We want to do better.

We got very good consistency with golf ball direction and distance. If you base your concern on results posted on internet websites, keep in mind that most of them are not concerned with great consistency.

There's no reason to think that a sling is necessary to utilize the concept of dropping a dead weight (unchanging and therefore consistent) to propel a horseshoe.

It's no skin off my nose if you don't use it, but you asked for suggestions. Furthermore, you might not ought to discount solicited ideas so quickly -- it kinda makes me want to challenge you to build a better horse shoe throwing machine than I can, and I don't want to invest my time in it.

I have to agree with Bill; the 'modified' trebuchet approach is the correct one ie. an underhanded trebuchet. The 'keys' to consistency are: 1) mass of the trebuchet relative to the horseshoe (must be large mass for stability of the tossing device), 2) the consistency of loading the horseshoe into the 'holder', and 3) the precision of 'release'. Maintain the large stability of the device and the precision of operation, loading, and release, and the consistency will be there.

I can give you a excellent design, but with conditions. I have a major design for operating an airport in zero visibility. At the 94 meeting NASA engineers told me it was the perfect design to operate an airport. But the FAA actually syuppressed it. They were making too much money from kickbacks from all the failed radars they built and faied in testing. Last word i got was that they would never use the design, unless i spread money around Washington. So here is the deal: I will send you the design if you patent it in the three names, and agree to spli the sale or licensing among the three of us equally. I have two small arms I gave to the Army, that is being tested at the Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. Mr. Joel Goldman Head of JSSAP Joint Services Small Arms Program. I also have a desigmn to unload a Highrise of any height with 615 tenents on the ground every five minutes, and put firemen at the face of the fire within 5 minutes of arrival at the Building. I have a design to kill roadside bombs, but I have one hitch I need to overcome, before I can give it to the Army. I do not want to allow the Army not to use my designs because they will not pay for them. The Grunts need all the help we can give them.I learned from the FAA that the Governmentt does nothing unless the Buearocrats are paid off. My friend (One of the first editors of U. S. News and World Report) went back to Washington, and checked out what was going on with my patent, "Nothing will happen unless fris spreads money around Washington." So There have been many deaths from aircraft failures (usually pilot Failure, like the one last week. My patent would have prevented that one and the one last winter at Midway.) This happens since my patent came out in 1994. Most deaths would have been avoided. Most Pilot errors would not have occurred if my patent had been used. The Control towers would not rely on vision. just Computers with intelligent sensors, and antennas in the runway to control the airports. No pilot would take off from the wrong runway. But what is civillian deaths if the Buearocrats make money. And The National Safety transportation Board can not require the FAA to install New Technology, but can only require the FAA to patch any problem from that antiquated system they use. but they get their kickbacks. mfris@sbcglobal.net Marvin E. Frisbie. Contact me at : mfris@sbcglobal.net

Marvin,

If you really believe that your designs would have made a difference and that it is corrupt bureaucrats preventing their adoption you should do two things if you wish to avoid becoming part of the corruption and see that some action is taken:

1. Contact your US Senators and your Representatives in Congress and state your case.
2. Tell them that if you do not see some action (speech, hearing, bill, press conference, etc.) within some time period of your choosing, that you will go public with these allegations, including the fact that you went to the Legislature first and they took no action.

I guarantee that if your claims are legitimate (and you better be prepared to defend them) these politicos will be falling all over each other to help. The legislators, particularly those who are hungry for media attention either because they are young and upcoming or old and needing to freshen up their image, love nothing better than to stick it to the executive branch, which includes ALL of the "bureaucrats" in the FAA and the Army (DoD). They hate nothing more than bad press also, which is what they will get if they do nothing.

If you really want to stir up the pot, give them a very short time period, especially if it is right before an election, and go to the media anyway.

Also, going public is safer than being a pest in the background THEY can quietly ignore or remove!

Thank you for your reasoned reply. I really appreciate it. These are the feeble steps i took. The patent came out in july of 1994. I flooded the FAA with it, Got a letter back that said to deal with only one person, Got an invite to the DOT meeting in Langley VA, in Fall of 94. For the three day meeting Virginia ; the NASA engineers there told me it was a peerfect design for an airport. The FAA told me they would accept Highway testing. In about 96, an English aerospace Company was interested, but finally told me they could not buck the FAA. In 1997 Dr, Streit of Penn state sent a testing program to the FAA and DOT to test my patent. Pen State was doing 85% of the highway testing for DOT. They refused to test it. They tested magnetic nails in the highway, and radars on cars. both were useless in an auto highway. Mag nails only told the vehicle a nail was there, without any to tell the car where "There" Was. 500 radars on one mile of highwya would all interfere with all the others. The whole exercise was to prevent my patent from being tested,. I got about a dozen house, and senate members through the years to put pressuere on the FAA, they always returned a message to me that the FAA told them it wans not tested. Finally I got amy patent to President Bush, i told him to have atrudted engineer to check out my patent, and if the engineer tells him it will do as advertizes, tel,l the FAA to deal with me. i never heard anything for about 10 months, and I got a letter from the FAA that Bush told them to deal with me. So I contacted all the defense contracters to get information for cockpit systems so i could intergrate my system in with existing equipment in the cockpits. No company answered my tetters, and faxes, nor would they take my calls. I re looked at the letter. It was dated at the beginning of August by the typist. I received it just after Christmes. the Letter cancellation was stamped Dec. 15th. They took about 5 months to shut down all the Defense contractors, so i could not get the critical information i needed. Later Don lund (One of the First editors of the U.S. News and World Repiort went back to Washington, and walked into a watering hole of the FAA. He yelled Who knows Fris Zero Viz? Ebveryone yelled back We do. What is happening with it? Nothing until Fris spreads money around Washington. During this extended period other things hapened. Chrysler brought a new test track it had a barrior all around it "To keep the cars on the track when it lost radio control.I thought it was stupid, so I sent Chrysler engineeriong my patent and told thelm to license it from me, and they will not need the barrior. About six months later Chrysler had an automatic test track. I called them and cthey would not answer me. So, I contacted kirk kerkorian, one of the biggest stock owner of Chrysler. he owned tricenda Corporation of Las Vegas. I got aletter from Chrysler that he contacted them, and chrysler would be happy to have dicscussuion with mte. Nothing happened except a lot od innocous letters came and went, and the infringment was never mentioned, except in my letters to chrysler. Finally a woman engineer was sending me their information so i could press my infringment case, by 3 day mail. A week and a half later I called her, and a man answered. I asked for the woman engineer, and he told me she was fired. Unusal conincendence. it was the same day i talked to her. I contacted the National Transportation Safety board every timme there was a plane crash that my patent would have prevented. they always told me they could not require the FAA to use new safe systems. The NTSB could only tell the FAA to patch whatever the problewm was taht caused the crash. merely bandaded a bad system. In the 94 meeting the Science officer of fruehoff ( Devision of Merceedes benz told me they had spent 5 yaers trrying to utilize magnetic control of vehicles. he congradulated me for doing so. Six months later they had an auto test track. And either Toyota, or Honda had a test track in toyko that was automatic. it was at 1 science avenue, toyko. If memory serves. Boy I sure wish i had you to advise me. I surely didn't do enough. thanks for your input. Take a look at the design I sent for the Horse Shoe design. You will see it is elegant. Lousy free hand drawing, but the design is elegant. And it will work. Fris. PS. My new political party will be up in about a few weeks. I keep getting sidetracked. you will find it at : www.uscitizensparty.org If you want to email me direct mfris@sbcglobal.net Thanks for the diversion Fris. PS Since I gave up my patent, they are using it inEurope? I saw a promo about a driverless bus system. it was my design. And Chrysler is still infringing. They modified the sensors, and computer and the servos driving a car into one robot, so it doesn't look like infringment. But my patent had anything that accomplished what my patent accomplished was an infringment. And i had a killer Patent Attorney. But I could never get the information to charge infringment, But chrysler nwever told me to stop saying infringmentm because any letter from them demanding I recend my infringment statements, I would had enough to get them into court. I would have walked away with millions. They are thieves, but smart thieves. Fris.

I guess Chrysler, et al, has better lawyers than yours! Too bad.

Except for the one US News guy, you did not mention talking to anyone in the press. I know USN&WR. I used to read it. Unfortunately, they have a conservative agenda, and so are not likely to rock the boat with a conservative administration. On the other hand, most of the media have a very liberal bias and would probably be pleased as punch to go after Bush bureaucrats.

Not sure if starting your own political party is the best move though. Too easy to be labeled a carckpot that way, and be dismissed out of hand.

With any luck, you will soon become an urban legend, like the 300 MPG carburator guy who invention was supposedly suppressed by the oil companies in the 1950's. The best you could probably hope for is to make enough noise they will pay you off just to shut you up!

Well, Prior to contacting the FAA and going to the DOT meeting, I contacted every large corportation ,and some were interested, until I went the the FAAmeeting. They saw how my design would put them out of business, (Lay off all the Air traffic controllers) then the companies went silence. I think that was what made the Englis Aerospace company drop out. they tole n\me they could not buck the FAA. And that was quite early in the life of the patent. And telling me they would accept highway testing, then preventing Pen State from testing ot, by testing two unworkable things, in place of my patent. One thing I didn't mention of the DOT meeting. they as much as said they would rig the California test for the Auto highway. My design would have caused the DOT to actually start builfding the AUTO haighway, and the Auto Airports. They at one time, in about 2000 was going to put radars on the top of the control tower, (In Reno, NV, where I saw it in a newspaper) and when the radar operator saw two planes close together, he would ask the Air Traffic guys to look out the tower windows to see how close the aircraft were. I wrote to the FAA and asked why was the Radar necessary? We had Air traffic controllers already operating the tower, and controlling the ground traffic. They scrapped the top of the Control Tower Radar. Our Government is cash and carry. The definition of an honest congressmen is that when he ie bought, he stays Bought. With this Ileave you. Thanks for the interest. I will need people tp run for office in every state, and City. You would be a good possibility. it will be easy, and cheap. my check of the demographics, show me, if I get it up on time, I can beat Jan Schawoski for the 9th congressional District in Illinois. My survey was 1,000 pwople on the street. I told them about my party for about 30 minutes each. All but one told me to gret the web site up as soon as possible. One girl was against my party, because she said we should feed all those poor Mexicans. I have abour 500 pages of federal platform, a 10 year plan to restore America to its heritage: One Country, One Language, One People. Return our manufacturing, get out of the WTO, Build All American Factories, Rebuild our institutions of learning, by gentle persuasion. Return our R&D to the U.S. Get rid of Foreign oil. kick out all the illeagl aliens. too much to mention, even in brief. My party is coming up slow, because I get sidetracked. I can't figure out how to get my drawing for the Horse shoe drawing to Buffalo Thanks Fris. PS when it is up let me know what you think of it. Look at the Systemic Failure of our Institutions in the United States. (Republicans, Democrats, Unions, Media, Congress.)

I don't think you have to worry about patents on this project. It's just for fun. I can't really see this as anything close to being viable in terms of seriously marketing it. Who would buy it? If you are seriously interested in helping us with the design and you are not too busy we would gladly accept your advice. I have a basic concept in mind that I have been thinking on for about the last week or so. It basically is a mechanical arm mounted on a flywheel with a three "fingered" type of clasp to hold the shoe and some type of mechanical trip to release it at the right time and with a slight twisting motion to create the desired motion. I could probably sketch it for you if you like. I'm not much of an artist and the sketch might be crude but it should give you the general idea. The main problem I have at the moment is that I don't know exactly how to design the mechanisims I have in mind.

I did not mean to offend. Pardon my ignorance. It may be that I just don't know enough about how things go from concept to prototype. It's most likely that my preconception of what would work combined with my woefully inadequate level of experience in this field induced the premature conclusion. We will give the treb configuration another look. Perhaps you could give some more detailed input on exactly how this would work. I don't see how I would fix a shoe to the end of the arm and still get the combination of motion I think we need. It needs to release at the proper time with a slight twisting motion. I will somehow need to be able to vary the degree of motion to "tune it up", so to speak. I'm not sure that I will need to do this everytime it's used but then I guess I'll have to see how things go. This is uncharted territory for me.

You did not give any requirements other than to pitch a horseshoe with great accuracy. You stated that your goal was 98%, but also that you wanted to do better than the best human players with 80-85%.

This project would be an excellent one to suggest to your nearest university of community college with an engineering or pre-engineering program. Almost always there is a freshman or sophomore course in Engineering Design where the students are formed into teams and complete a semester project like the one you describe. There may even be an Engineering or Science Club that would want to take on such a project.

Since you did not state whether or not there might be a preference for the type of mechanism, let me suggest a few.

1. Fly-wheel design, would use a continous motor (AC or DC, depending on available power source),low friction surfaces, and a rubber surfaced fly-wheel that grabs the horseshoe and shoots it out along a low-friction guide track, very much like baseball pitching machines.

2. Spring-action shoe gun. Working like a large BB gun, a heavy duty coil spring would be pulled back and latched with a trigger release. The end of the spring would be attached to a pusher or pocket in which the horshoe is placed. Low friction guides for the sides of the horseshoe or the pocket keep the launch trajectory straight.

3. Compressed Air gun. Working similar to the gun above, but using a cylinder and piston arrangement propelled by pressurized air (could be from a tank to be portable).

4. Rotary Sling. Using a lightweight wheel or hub/arm with a tangentially mounted pocket to hold the horshoe, the wheel or hub is rotated less than one turn to a "cocked" position while loading some type of heavy duty spring device, either an elastic/rubber band or a metal coil or torsional spring. When the machine is cocked, the horseshoe is loaded into the pocket. On triggering, the wheel hub spins around until it hits a hard stop at the point where the horsehoe should begin its flight. Force of acceleration will keep the shoe firmly in the pocket until full speed is reached at the point of release. This works something like the clay pigeon throwing machine used in skeet shooting.

5. Crossbow design. Using a similar pocket or guide rails as above, mounted on a long rail, a spring steel "bow" is mounted on the far end to form a T shape. A steel cable or non-stretching strong rope is attached to the ends of the bow. The center of the cable will be attached to the rear of the pocket. When pulled back (using some type of lever and/or ratchet for assistance) the cable is hooked to a trigger release pin.

A few words of warning: These are kinetic energy or stored energy devices which could generate very high forces and cause injury to people or damage to property.

Also, to insure accuracy and repeatability, the device would need to be anchored to the ground securely or be of substantial mass with a high friction surface area such that recoil forces do not move the machine. Steel Tent pegs make nice temporary anchors when hammered into the ground through drilled holes in the machine base wherever it meets the ground if you are in a non-paved outside area.