Most Unfortunate Incidents

[BornaE]

What was the worst thing that happened to you that you cannot believe that it happened?

ours:
2006, quarter final 3 in AZ(not 100% sure)
during autonomous, another robot hits us, our radio drops down on the main breaker and turns the robot off, and we lose !!!!!:ahh: :(

[Bcliff358]

2006 finals match 2 Connecticut regional. With five seconds to go our robot flipped over and our turret went flying. We joked that our robot knew that it was done.:yikes:

[Joe J.]

862 is 0-14-0 combined from the 2006 and 2007 Championships.

One time back in 2005 we forgot flip the switch to engage our robots arm, before a match.

Our 2003 robot in its entirety, typically moved about 2-5 feet before blowing apart one or both of its gearboxes.

[Qbranch]

2005:

At BMR, our robot had a potentiometer that controlled the outer link of the arm's position... in classic titanic-style arrogance, we didn't put any limit switches on the robot. When the pot became uncoupled, he mighty 1000+:1 reduction provided by two FP motors mounted to two AM planetaries mounted to a Kitbot transmission mounted to a second Kitbot transmission THEN to a 2:1 chain reduction... subsequently bent the four pieces of 1x1 extruded aluminum that made up the frame to a 20 degree angle before somebody remembered the disable button. :ahh:

2006:

Rear right drive sprocket cracked in the eliminations. We subsequently lost Buckeye. :(

But I guess we made good on it this year. The way I figure, we've won zero regionals my sophomore/junior years (my first two years) and we've won three this year. So, I figure that's one regional per year. :]

-q

[Meredith Novak]

2005:

At BMR, our robot had a potentiometer that controlled the outer link of the arm's position... in classic titanic-style arrogance, we didn't put any limit switches on the robot. When the pot became uncoupled, he mighty 1000+:1 reduction provided by two FP motors mounted to two AM planetaries mounted to a Kitbot transmission mounted to a second Kitbot transmission THEN to a 2:1 chain reduction... subsequently bent the four pieces of 1x1 extruded aluminum that made up the frame to a 20 degree angle before somebody remembered the disable button.

We were talking about this very robot last night with our team. We were alliance partners in Atlanta (after you beat us at Boilermaker). The "llama" is one of my favorite of all time robots - I was very sad when it did that lemming thing and died:( I hope the great Chicago fire of 2008 is your only unfortunate incident of this year...

[Qbranch]

We were talking about this very robot last night with our team. We were alliance partners in Atlanta (after you beat us at Boilermaker). The "llama" is one of my favorite of all time robots - I was very sad when it did that lemming thing and died:( I hope the great Chicago fire of 2008 is your only unfortunate incident of this year...

Great Chicago Fire... love it... i think. :o

Well, don't feel too bad about the '05 bot. Our operator (taylor) this year and I resurrected it about a year ago... and added limit switchest this time. It was so easy! :]

...But... unfortunately, it was REALLY late when we finally got the arm all running again... and unfortunately a tetra we picked up got hooked on a rollie chair... taylor looked at me, I looked at him... we were both thinking... YEAH! Pick up the rollie chair!... and so i pushed the control stick forward...

And the motors ran... and ran... and ran... and suddenly my tired brain and his, at the same time, realized: If the chair isn't moving, and the motors are running... something's getting a lot of energy stored in it....

Shorly after that, the sprocket on the output shaft of the transmission resolutely said "No." and EXPLODED!!! :ahh: leaving several large dents in the robot's monocoque skin... and more startlingly, a 1/4"x1/4"x1/2" chip out of a cinderblock wall about 15' behind the robot.

I didn't say that one at first because it wasn't an on-season thing... but everyone... there are lessons to be learned:

1) don't work on robots that late at night that have that high of a gear reduction in them
2) wear safety glasses
3) sprockets can explode
4) AndyMark gear reductions are probably NOT the thing in your drivetrain that's going to fail.

Well, thats it, and it's nice to know you all are thinking about us BombSquad, because we think about you too... well, that and your floppy accumulator... :]

-q

[EricH]

2005:

At BMR, our robot had a potentiometer that controlled the outer link of the arm's position... in classic titanic-style arrogance, we didn't put any limit switches on the robot. When the pot became uncoupled, he mighty 1000+:1 reduction provided by two FP motors mounted to two AM planetaries mounted to a Kitbot transmission mounted to a second Kitbot transmission THEN to a 2:1 chain reduction... subsequently bent the four pieces of 1x1 extruded aluminum that made up the frame to a 20 degree angle before somebody remembered the disable button. :ahh:

2006:

Rear right drive sprocket cracked in the eliminations. We subsequently lost Buckeye. :(

But I guess we made good on it this year. The way I figure, we've won zero regionals my sophomore/junior years (my first two years) and we've won three this year. So, I figure that's one regional per year. :]

-qAt the cost of a burned sensor this year...:D

I think the worst one any of my teams has had was when 330 (2004), not fell off the bar onto the floor (which it did), but ran the lift with the lock engaged the next match. Some cleanup needed to be made afterwards--lift channels bent, and I think a cable or two broke.

[Rick TYler]

Semifinals of Washington FTC regional. Exothermic teams 575 and 417 are teamed with a third robot in the semifinals. 575 and 417 won easily in the first match. In the second match, 575 and the third 'bot lost a very close match. We now come up to the third and final match, with Plan B and Captain Hook once again paired up to take on the same robots as in match 1. The winner of this match goes to the finals.

Due to a field error, the teams wait until the last possible moment to turn on their computers, because some robots (especially our 418 for some reason) have had their computers time out before the end of a match. In the excitement, the drive team from 417 forgets to turn their robot on, and as the announcer says "begin" the teams turn on their remotes, starting their robots (remember that the field software is down, so all day the matches are started by the drivers). The coach for 417 looks down and sees no lights and then bends over an flips the "on" switch. The referees rule that touching the robot is a violation of the rule against touching a field object during a match and disqualify them. They are out. When the match is restarted, 575 has to play one-on-two and loses.

In an incredibly gracious discussion later, a mentor for one of the teams on the other alliance said that all three other drivers should have touched their robots -- causing the referees to face the possibility of DQing all four robots. Didn't happen, though, so the #1 alliance did not go into the finals. Bitterly disappointing, especially as it was our only regional: the Oregon regional gives preference to Oregon teams and wouldn't accept our registration, and we missed the Vancouver, BC, event due to mentor failure.

[AndyB]

2005:

At BMR, our robot had a potentiometer that controlled the outer link of the arm's position... in classic titanic-style arrogance, we didn't put any limit switches on the robot. When the pot became uncoupled, he mighty 1000+:1 reduction provided by two FP motors mounted to two AM planetaries mounted to a Kitbot transmission mounted to a second Kitbot transmission THEN to a 2:1 chain reduction... subsequently bent the four pieces of 1x1 extruded aluminum that made up the frame to a 20 degree angle before somebody remembered the disable button. :ahh:

2006:

Rear right drive sprocket cracked in the eliminations. We subsequently lost Buckeye. :(

But I guess we made good on it this year. The way I figure, we've won zero regionals my sophomore/junior years (my first two years) and we've won three this year. So, I figure that's one regional per year. :]

-q

I remember that. That was scary. (We were alliance partners at BMR, good job btw, haha).

As a 269 member, the worst thing that happened was in second to last match of qualifiers at Toronto last year, we blew out a speed controller. We thought it was a motor and spent our time swapping it out and our elevator ended up not working in our last match. Collectively, it is a large reason we didn't see the finals. Had I been a member this year, I would have considered their first missed match in who knows how long. Should be a fun team to watch in Archimedes though.

As a 171 member for this season only, I think the worst thing that happened was during practice, we had a motor rattle loose out of our toughbox and spin around wildly (the shaft didnt spin, the rest of the motor did, and tangle a bunch of wires. A little bit of loctite fixed the issue but it was a scary moment. If you look at the motor today, you'll notice the nice spiraling shape of its wires.

[Dreadfrost]

In 2007 we faced 1114 and 2056 twice in the finals at both Waterloo and GTR with team 854. In Waterloo we won the first match, but then at the end of the second match 1006 Fast Eddie lost a CIM i think, and got stuck in red's home zone which racked up 30 points in penalties. Because they were damaged the final match didn't go to well and we lost. Afterwards 1114's driver told our driver that we gave him the best defense he had seen, which really made us believe we had a chance.

Then in the GTR finals our team consisted of 854 (again) and 1241. Both robots did excellent but two bad things happened. In the second match 854 dropped their ramp (Loved your robot last year guys) and we drove up it but a ringer got caught on top and we couldn't drive forward enough for 1241 to drive up, so we lost. Then in the last match 2056 hit 854 hard and it damaged their ramp, so when they went to deploy it...well it just didn't deploy right away and time ran out.

At first i was very frustrated with the results of both regionals but hey we were still finalist and that was the year we finally won Chairmans at waterloo.

[Billfred]

Palmetto Regional 2007, QF1-2. 1251/1626/1758 vs. 1618/1102/801. The former had stomped the latter in the first match to the tune of 264-0. (And, in the final qualification match, 1251/804/1436 had done the same thing to a lesser extent to 1618/1293/34 to the tune of 140-0.)

We just now made the brilliant realization that our opponents lacked a ramp on their alliance. We came up with a new plan: 1102 and 801 would get one tube each on the rack, then all three of us would give the fiercest defense we could supply. Throw in the ramp points, and we'd have to hope that they couldn't get a row of six.

Somehow, nobody on our team noticed that our tower, which contained our electronics, came loose in the back. (Come to think of it, we're still fighting that issue at demos.) The result can be seen in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF9BUaVgxMw), ending where our main battery cable pulled out of the distribution block. We lost the second round 48-19, making me think we might've pulled it off if that wire had held. Unfortunate, but it led us to step our wiring game up for 2008.

[Sean Schuff]

2003 - Stack Attack - While in autonomous mode our robot goes up the ramp to knock the totes down. One tote falls on our robot corner first and happens to find the baseball sized opening in our polycarb for reaching the main breaker. The polycarb deflects just enough to allow the tote to trip the breaker and end our match prematurely.

2007 - Rack n' Roll - In the semifinals of the Galileo division one of our alliance partners is pushed into the rack causing them to de-score a ring. We still would have won despite the penalty but at the last second, after both alliance partners had been lifted by our robot one of the operators nudged the controls and rolled off our robot costing us 30 points, the match and a chance to advance to the finals.

Such is life in the fast-paced, laugh-in-the-face-of-adversity, never-let-them-see-you-sweat, sometimes-you're-the-windshield-sometimes-you're-the-bug world of FIRST Robotics!

[Jared Russell]

Championship semifinals on Einstein in 2003. Autonomous mode takes us up the ramp - and right up Wildstang's wedged sides! We flip over backwards. Usually that's not a big deal. Our arm could right the robot. But the force of the fall absolutely destroyed the sprocket in the arm, and we spent the rest of the match on our back.

We missed the next match, too, and Wildstang went on to win the Championship.

[Herodotus]

In one practice match at Western this year our robot first plowed into the wall and kinked the entire frame. We then preceded to slam our knock off bar into the little supporting bar at the corner of the overpass and bent the entire assembly.

Thankfully we had it all repaired by Friday.

Last year on Curie we had one oft he gears at the base of our arm simply snap when we got entangled in another robot. Luckily we had some delrin blocks that essentially locked the rotation in place so we had to turn the robot instead of just rotating the arm. We managed to still do alright without arm rotation. :)

In 2006 our robot went up the ramp, and then promptly was driven backwards off the ramp and tipped over backwards. We bent the frame, but thankfully it was part of the upper frame and was essentially cosmetic damage, though it looks nasty. It's still bent to this day.

[Jetweb]

we drove up it but a ringer got caught on top and we couldn't drive forward enough

We lost the championships last year for the same reason!!! well enough griping.


I also have countless things i have destroyed with autonomous. In our shop we have a metal railing that goes around our practice field that just fits the base of our robot and leaves all the electronics/ arms in the destruction zone. Well lets just say we turned the wrong direction last year and severed our gripper, thank goodness for PVC Arms. :D

[Uberbots]

we had several issues last year where our gripper would get entangled with another robot and get smooshed up,destroying our ability to score (luckily we identified this problem early and build many spares)

This year, we sometimes randomly shear a roll pin that controls the shifting in the transmissions, limiting us to low gear (and a snails-pace 5 fps), and we have also had our 'fingers' pulled off of our robot to dangle around and poke things, destroying our ability to hurdle (we think we fixed this in CT- no problems since then (= )

most of our other failures exist in our chaining.

[jblay]

this year semis at trenton match 2 after losing match 1 our robot didn't turn on because of battery problems and we weren't given a rematch because we received a slight voltage reading.

[EricH]

Here's one I just remembered...

One match in L.A. 2005, 330 was lined up to play, as were its partners. They had good opponents. Then things went haywire. The other tetra-placer on the alliance was barely outside the size box and wasn't allowed to put their arm the rest of the way down (which they had to power up to do). They were disabled for the entire match. About 15 seconds in, the other partner went to dump a tetra into a lower goal and missed. It landed on their main breaker. It's now a 1-on-3. Ouch.

Another team that year had problems with generating sparks on the field. We're talking showers of them.

[ADHDassassin]

I love it when you have problems that are deemed impossible.
Such as your robot magically developing its own autonomous code. That's a really handy feature.
It is especially great at ramming the robot so hard into the rack that one of the wheels mounts comes off. The really fun part comes when we ask questions from everybody who knew anything about the IFI system and were told that this was impossible. There was no autonomous code yet it moved by itself.
This video explains it better trust me look for team 1477 to go pinball around the course.
http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match.php?matchid=3736

[Zyik]

973 has had some pretty bad luck in years past.

Cal Games 2007, eliminations.

A team on the red alliance had an autonomous mode that would ram the other side. This appeared to be intentional, as it wouldn't just go forwards, it would race forwards, turn, and race forwards again aiming for the blue alliance robots. One of the several times they hit just they snapped a weld or two on our ramps, forcing us to only use one for the match. That made it so we could only lift one robot, instead of two, and lost us the match.

Wasn't the first time we'd lost a ramp that way, and if it had happened that way at a regional I would have been more upset. The other few times we had lost a ramp was from playing defense, not sitting helplessly in autonomous. However, Cal Games is just an off-season, so while I didn't like what happened, I don't worry about it.

Silicon Valley 2008.

Somehow we managed to break two wheels. I have no idea how, and last time I asked, no one knew. It wasn't like the inside got chewed up, but it looked like it had dented from the outside...

Silicon Valley 2006.

Robot managed to develop its own autonomous...

Robot also managed to shoot one of its poof balls and hit the center of the top of the projected screen. The ball then fell onto a couple of refs heads... Anyone who's seen how high up that screen is knows that its quiet a feat. :ahh:

[bigbeezy]

In 2006 during the Galileo quarterfinals our main breaker would cut out right after auton and so we would be dead for most of the match until another robot bumped into us. after our first match of doing this we told our alliance partners to bump us to get us back online, but they too were having electrical problems and weren't able to do anything either. and so we sat in the same position for about a min and a half and then we get bumped and quickly go score but by then its too little too late.

[bigbeezy]

Silicon Valley 2008.

Somehow we managed to break two wheels. I have no idea how, and last time I asked, no one knew. It wasn't like the inside got chewed up, but it looked like it had dented from the outside...


did you get pushed sideways when these broke? I know thats how we broke a couple of our wooden wheels last year.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

2006 - Blew a victor on Einstein. Turned out someone dropped a screw in it. Oops.

2007 - Last qual match on Curie - After auto mode, the gripper automatically opened and dropped a keeper on the rack during teleop. Dropped us from 1 to 3 seed.

[Brandon Holley]

2001: Finished 9th in galileo, didn't get picked

2002: Finals of mid-atlantic regional....our ball dumping basket was up getting ready to drop a load of balls into one of the goals 25 was grasping, and all of a sudden SLAM a cable snapped, we lost by a few points

2004: At PARC our robot decided to write its own auto mode, which deployed our pneumatic pistosn used to lift our robot off the groudn (200+ pounds of force) directly into the pneumatic tanks.....thankfully they only got dented

2005: Quarterfinals of NJ regional match #3, with only 3-4 seconds left I was driving the bot back towards the home zone to hopefully get the bonus 10 points...the arm didn't collapse all the way for some reason so we drove in to the wall hoping it would fold itself back up, and it didn't, i tried to turn aroudn and back in, but time expried

2006: Quarterfinals of Boston, our skyway wheel hub sheared itself off of the rest of the wheel...we hobbled along on 3 wheels trying to keep the other robots off of the ramp, however we were unable to move and 578 got up the ramp with literally no time left

2007: Had one of the best tube scoring averages on archimedes, somehow we got skipped for finals

2008: Our robot arrived a full 8 hours late on thursday, giving us a late start on work that would have taken all day thursday to complete anyway....we weren't fully running until saturday, where we lost in the semis to the dominant 39.


There is always a story to be told.

[s_forbes]

Our team has started a new trend of building robots that don't listen to what we tell them. At three of our last four competitions (07 Atlanta FTC, 08 Arizona FTC, and 08 Arizona FRC) the robot sat still for more than half the time. It's been rather frustrating...

One I remember from 2006: we were in the semis in Sacramento and we were having drivetrain problems. We had just barely squeaked by in our last match, having lost one of our treads. We rivet a new one on and hope for the best; then they both fall off in the next match. Scrambling for time, we repair both of the wheels and put the robot back on the field for our third semi-final match, only to realize we forgot to put the chain back on one side of the drive. :rolleyes:

(852 and 1662 were amazing alliance partners, we managed to pull off a win in the finals!)

[JBotAlan]

2006. Indiana Robotics Invitational. We had 2-speed pneumatically-shifted transmissions. The opposing alliance, we knew, would go straight over to the low goal and dump, so our plan was to sprint over to that wall at our top speed (something like 15ft/s that year :ahh: ) and shift down with only a few feet left. Tested in the pit; it worked great. Put the 'bot out on the field for quarterfinals, it sprinted across and totally neglected to shift. It slammed into the wall going 15ft/s, causing the whole robot to spin about 135 degrees to the right, and causing the main battery to break free of its Velcro mounting and disconnect from the robot, leaving us parked there for the rest of the match. It was my program that did this...and I still to this day have no explanation of what happened.

2007. IRI yet again. We were doing exceptionally well and made it into the finals. First out of three matches..we won; this match was not very eventful. Second match...the scores are so close...and a bit of pneumatic tubing on our arm cancelled our bonus points, causing us to lose the match. Third match, about 15 seconds into teleop, we run into the opposing alliance wall and...no response. On closer inspection post-match, our radio had come unplugged--nobody ever screwed it in.

2008. Great Lakes Regional. My autonomous code delays, as it is supposed to. Our partner (I don't remember who it was anymore...it was a practice match) drove out and was hovering slowly around the overpass; I think they were using a camera or something...they were attempting to knock down a ball. My code dutifully ticks off the second and a half delay, then drives forward. The partner's forklift is up above the overpass. We plow into the back of them, and continue pushing until they are laying on the floor sideways. :o That was a fun match...

Also this year, more than once we would get off-course but the code wouldn't sense it, and would faithfully count off gear-tooth sensor clicks--so we would be running into the center wall, the wheels would scrub enough so that it looked like we had travelled far enough cross-ways, and then it would start the 3rd segment run--back towards the alliance station, but since we weren't around the corner, we would run over the line we had already crossed, getting a penalty before the humans had a chance to touch it.

EDIT: In 2006, I did not personally get the pleasure of witnessing this event (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/24374), but it looks like it was quite entertaining and smelly...

[Cowmankoza]

Palmetto Regional 2007, QF1-2. 1251/1626/1758 vs. 1618/1102/801. The former had stomped the latter in the first match to the tune of 264-0. (And, in the final qualification match, 1251/804/1436 had done the same thing to a lesser extent to 1618/1293/34 to the tune of 140-0.)


The 1251, 1626, 1758 alliance later went on to the Finals in which our unfortunate incedent was an overly loose turret chain, when drilling into it to fix it after Finals match 1, some aluminum shavings accidently fell onto our control board, giving us all kinds of crazy controller errors for Finals match 2.

In Palmetto 2008, one of the banebot motors that drives our elevator became loose in its planetary gearbox and proceeded to bind in SF match 2, we tried to fix it during our time out (i was 1 win apiece for red and blue alliance) and the bolt holding the gearbox down seized and prevented us from fixing it for our last finals match, perhaps causing us the win

[Rick TYler]

Competition robots are just a gaggle of single points of failure flying in close formation.

[Ryan Dognaux]

We were talking about this very robot last night with our team. We were alliance partners in Atlanta (after you beat us at Boilermaker). The "llama" is one of my favorite of all time robots - I was very sad when it did that lemming thing and died:( I hope the great Chicago fire of 2008 is your only unfortunate incident of this year...

So this brings back from memories. This was my senior year on 234, or as I like to call it, 'the year that we went against the most intimidating alliances and almost won.'

In the semi-finals at BMR in 2005, it was Teams 16, 234, and 393 vs. Teams 71, 269, and 1024. Really. That's a super alliance right there. Anyway, I won't go into all the logistics of the game that year, but essentially, our alliance lost by a couple of inches. In that year's game, the tetra that counted was the tetra that was higher. A tetra ended up being thrown under a goal and was propped against the floor and the field, giving it a couple inches on the one that had been dropped to the floor in autonomous. It was the deciding factor of the match. You want to talk about a hard loss, that was the hardest I think.

Tomorrow's story: how we took it to three matches in the QF's in Atlanta against 118, 229, and 312 :ahh: What a year that was.

[Josh Drake]

: )

[Meredith Novak]

So this brings back from memories. This was my senior year on 234, or as I like to call it, 'the year that we went against the most intimidating alliances and almost won.'

In the semi-finals at BMR in 2005, it was Teams 16, 234, and 393 vs. Teams 71, 269, and 1024. Really. That's a super alliance right there. Anyway, I won't go into all the logistics of the game that year, but essentially, our alliance lost by a couple of inches. In that year's game, the tetra that counted was the tetra that was higher. A tetra ended up being thrown under a goal and was propped against the floor and the field, giving it a couple inches on the one that had been dropped to the floor in autonomous. It was the deciding factor of the match. You want to talk about a hard loss, that was the hardest I think.

I was actually thinking of that match as one of our most painful losses - I just didn't have the strength to put it into words. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.:eek:

[Pjohn1959]

In 2006 at Lone Star during a quarterfinal match, we turned our robot right, and our battery went left. Needless to say that was the end of the match for us.:(

[Betty_Krocker]

Lets see...

Well for starters, last year being our rookie year we placed 5th in the VCU regional. I honestly think that this was bad for us. I know at least for myself that I and most of the returning members had unrealistic ideas about how well we were going to do this year, being very bummed when we dint even make it in the top 30.

And this year, we had a flawed idea from the start. Some I and a few other member spearheaded a tosser design, which was ultimately shot down due to the fact that it would cause the ball to be thrown out of the arena or hit other bots, damaging them, etc. Instead we settled for a design that wasn't even built, so the idea the team voted on was never put into practice. Any one who saw us could see that we had very large wide arms, to be used for catching the ball, not driving around the track. Well since we did have to drive (important people on the team *cough* *mentors and such* thought we would be able to sit and wait for the ball) it made it very tough on me as a driver to navigate the track. Eventually be tied our arms down and I had more to work with, making the team mad in the process. Over all we had problems from the start.

[Abra Cadabra IV]

In the middle of one of our (early) matches this year, our wheels stopped firing at the same speed and our robot started turning left and slamming into the center wall at high speed. =0 We still don't know what the problem was.

[Tom Line]

Hmm - most unfortunate....

Quarterfinals at Great Lakes. Us, Martians and Cat Attack against the Killer Bees, Feds, and Team R.O.B.O.T.I.C.S.

We won hard fought first match against them 72 to 70.
In the first run of the second match, we were up by 30 points when a piece of the field fell off. The match was stopped with 5 seconds remaining and we were told to replay it.

In the second-second match, it was again very hard fought. At the end of the match, one of the opposing alliance bot's bumped us from the side (no more than a normal hit, mind you) and our entire lift system ejected out the front of the bot.

We called timeout and worked to fix the lift. We thought we had it together, we manually ran it up and down, and sprinted the bot onto the field with 4 seconds left in the timeout.

In the third match, the lift went up 2 feet - and then our arm operator realized it wasn't coming back down. We had tied a single knot in the wrong place. He did the smart thing (way to think on your feet!) and didn't move it up anymore. That allowed us to lap. It came down to a last second hurdle and we lost by 6 points.

It was heartbreaking.

[Ashley Weed]

2003 Championships

After holding steady at 6th throughout the event, and many teams coming in and out of our pit 'selling themselves to us' trying to get a glimpse if we would pick them for our partners.

We went out for our final match with two strong alliances, with us losing a single drill motor on our drive just out of the gate. This left us with only the ability to 'spin in circles', out alliance just couldn't pul through till the end of the match.

The match bumped us down out of the top 8, and leaving us with the hopes of being picked for the big dance with all the teams who had checked us out. However, we were left devistate without a chance to play in the finals after such a strong showing with a great robot.

[EricH]

We went out for our final match with two strong alliances, with us losing a single drill motor on our drive just out of the gate. This left us with only the ability to 'spin in circles', out alliance just couldn't pul through till the end of the match.Reminds me of an episode in 2004...
330 had one of the few "slider" robots that year, with a drill motor 4WD skid steer drivetrain. It had an angled front to allow for climbing the 6" step.

Now, at the Fall Classic, they're dominating the morning rounds. Then a drive sprocket broke. It had been lightweighted a little too much. Not a big deal, right? Wrong. If it had been the other one on that side, play on. but it was the rear sprocket, and the rear wheel provided ALL the power during a certain period when climbing the step. Ended our tournament right there, because we didn't have a spare.

In retrospect, we might have been able to try hanging from the floor, but that involved a lot of twisting as the robot climbed.

The funny part is, we were still picked for eliminations. We respectfully declined.

[Renee Becker-Blau]

2007- In Milwaukee, or Cleveland, our programmer programed the robot to go forward for five seconds........and forgot the STOP. Thus in autonomous mode the robot goes full speed all the way across the field, crashes into the wall wheels still spinning, and we're DQed for the rest of the match.

2007- In Atlanta, we were trying to get up on team 694 ramps with about 20 seconds left to go in that match. We try getting on twice, but get hooked on the railing on the side of the ramp both times. About five seconds to go, we get about half way on, balanced on the side ramp. The match ends, the robots turn off, and our robot tips over crashing to the ground. The picture of our drivers trying to "save" the robot ended up in the FIRST intro video under Your FIRST Challenge. ^_^ that was pretty awesome. The video that I got as media, of the robot falling shakes because I'm jumping up and down screaming "NO!" at the top of my lungs.

Renee

[takeegan]

aim high: our robot was seeing a circular light instead of the box so it couldn't lock on, we fixed the programming in time to make it to the quarter finals in battlecry, only to be taken out when another robot collided with us and broke off a good portion of our robot.

overdrive: festo problems plaqued us threw the Bayou regional, we replaced everything and got everything working but it was a bit to late.

animation 2008: of topic but i think it counts, we read the dates wrong and only ended up with two weeks to do our animation (i think it still looked good and had a great time doing it but we hadda pull a few all nighters to get it done)

[Lil' Lavery]

animation 2008: of topic but i think it counts, we read the dates wrong and only ended up with two weeks to do our animation (i think it still looked good and had a great time doing it but we hadda pull a few all nighters to get it done)

On the topic of animation. (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showpost.php?p=343964) That animation (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v178/Mystlyfe/116%20stuffage/?action=view&current=0116_AVA2005.flv) won the Chesepeake regional.

[Rupnick]

2008 Wisconsin regional Semifinals 1675 is teamed with 1625 and 1730, 1625 burns up their shooter motor and 1730s grip gets demolished.

long story short we lost.

[evanisthat!]

2006 Curie QF match 2, back when I was on 108, our auto ran into the ramp and caused the battery to disconnect. This event yeilded the highest score of the year! 171-68. Needless to say we were less than happy with our unfortunate circumstances. Then, again in 2007, at Las Vegas we were the number 8 seed, in the third QF match against the number 1 seed, and our battery fell out about 20-30 seconds into the match, causing our heavy defense strategy to fall apart, and thus the match to slip away.
Batteries can be the root of all evil. :( :( :( :( :(