were there robot related injuries on your team?

[keithv708]

One time it was a progamming;

[paulcd2000]

i cut myself on a chair while reading this thread
I'm serious. the chair has a sharp point, and i cut myself on it while reading this

[CourtneyB]

Last year, i believe i vagely remember what happened, but one of our great mechanical student (he graduated) cut his finger deeply on a machine. i might be wrong but he cut himself badly on sumthin last year. Theres alot of finger injuries

-Court-

[Arkorobotics]

A member got his fingers stuck in between the chain and sprocket. Ouch..


We had this close call:
The CMU Cam was aimed to red and one of our members was wearing a Red Citroën jacket and when we said follow the red it chased him down our hall way. He took a sharp turn on a corner and the robot took a sharp turn perfectly (looked like a movie stunt) and then the guy threw off this jacket. Lucky him. The robot was a bull and could have seriously injured him.

['lil Gach]

Originally Posted by CourtneyB

Last year, i believe i vagely remember what happened, but one of our great mechanical student (he graduated) cut his finger deeply on a machine. i might be wrong but he cut himself badly on sumthin last year. Theres alot of finger injuries

-Court-

Courtney is right, he was using a sander and is finger got to close. It ended up sanding off is finger nail I think.

There were also a lot of injuries to people's heads from our fingers. I know that there were a few times I had my had in the robot and would go to lift my head and I would hit one of the fingers. It didn't feel good at all. I know that there were a few people that did that. Last year one of the girls and I were doing some electrical stuff and we both got burned. She got burned from a hot glue gun and I burnt my arm on the heat gun.
There were only a few injuries.

Tiffany

[KTorak]

We've never had anything serious, just a few minor cuts from those sharp edges. As for something funny...one of our engineers was standing next to a mill and we went to go use the jog function intead of cranking it back 20 something inches...and the engineer was hit right below the belt in an very uncomfortable spot with a handle spinning at 100in/min...Set it back to Zero! is still an inside joke to many team members.

[MrBamboo]

one of our builders cut off a 1/3 strip of his thumb while handling the drill press with a special drill bit with blades on it, he didn't clamp the pvc pipe we were drilling and the drill press pulled the pipe into the bit with his hand holding on to it. Had to go to the hospital and when we found the strip of flesh on the ground later (we didn't realize it was completely cut off until then) we called the hospital and they told us it was too late and couldn't attach it back. This was this year and just like a week ago. He's still recovering :-/ It was a pretty serious injury. He's getting better though.

Other than that, a few minor injuries, ppl burning their hands touching hot fresh-cut metals, splinters from wood, etc.

[Zach Purser]

Here's a cool invention that saves your fingers when you're working with wood, now we just need to make it work for metal.

http://www.sawstop.com/

I wonder if it would be possible to build this technology into a robot so if it came into contact with someone the main power would be shut off. The mechanism is a variation of touch-lamp technology and as long as the robot has rubber wheels or treads it seems like it should work.

[Validius]

last year i became confused during driving practice and ramed the robot into one of the engineers. He wasnt very happy about that......

[Validius]

Ever since we got the competition box with the disable switch i hve been a nazi about having it on whenever people are around or when i go to check somthing. It is truely a great feature.

[Matt Krass]

Was debugging autonomous positioning on the test robot, set to maintain a position. I over-dialed a potentiometer I was using for tweaking. Robot shot backwards, slammed me up against a work bench and pinned me, out of reach of the OI, my girlfriend hit the kill switch and knocked the dongle off, making it useless, then I managed to kick the tether out.

Life lesson, even if it's not programmed to move, stay clear!

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Matt Krass

Life lesson, even if it's not programmed to move, stay clear!

Safety tip: Our cart is narrower than our drivetrain on purpose. The wheels hang in space so we can test code without the 'bot moving. All changes happen on the cart first, then on the ground. It just takes a second to lift it onto the cart.

Team members still hit their heads on the tetra arm of Wooden Thunder, though. Even with the breaker for the pneumatics pulled and the PWM cables removed from arm motor outputs, it's still going after skulls -- when people bending over to work on the electronics stand up without thinking. We're using Woodie as the testbed for our new code, but we still don't want to remove the arm. Once Top Gun is up and running, Woodie gets to be the sparring partner.

[KrtZer0]

There was the time last year at anapolis when the robot almost fell out of the arena, almost hitting one of the judges....

[MikeDubreuil]

Most injuries can be avoided by better planning and not trying to work faster while doing it carelessly.

• Several years ago a rookie team went to nationals without a working robot. My team, 175 at the time, and other teams worked together to get them a working robot. Their mentor was working carelessly to get them a working faster. He ended up cutting a pretty big gash in one of his fingers while using a saw. He ended up needing stitches.
• Last year at the championship a member of my team was fairly seriously injured. He was standing next to the robot in the pits and we had placed the robot on an unsteady support structure of our robot cart and the kit boxes. The robot fell and the corner of the frame tore through his leg. It went through so deep you could see bone. Nedless to say blood was everywhere and he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. I think he needed about 20 stitches to close the wound, This year we're designing a better cart.

[Schneidie]

Yeah, a few years back, one of our team members was using the drill press and had just changed the bit. I've only heard about this one, but anyways, she left the chuck key in the drill press and our chuck key is chained to the back of the drill press. She turned on the machine and a few of her fingers were all black and mangled for a few weeks. she' sstill on the team, and has had no further injuries.