pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

Re: pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

Love the picture! It reminded me about this meme





Taken from Facebook's Robotics Memes
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Roboti...07270772736087

Re: pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

That feeling when you're being told your robot is illegal, despire having passed inspections and both the regional level, and the championship inspection. It's not a good one...

I know that feeling Andy... 2010 will forever be an infamous year for 1126.

Re: pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

We shared the pain, Andy. We noticed a late response to a Q and A question regarding painting of air tanks being regarded as "modification" and had to switch out our 10 black tank manifold that served double as our ball chamber just days before bagging. We had a talk with some of the Clippard guys at Champs and they said they are likely going to be manufacturing their tanks in color soon so have faith and hope their choices includes purple:D

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It happens. Even to the best.

I agree, Mary's expression is priceless.

Re: pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

Couldn't you have had AndyMark quickly create a part number am-2007P for a purple COTS tank?

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I told him that at the shop :)

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I wish I had thought of this pun...



Next year will we be allowed to paint the tanks?

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And it only took 3 LRI's!
These pics are all great.

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I can just imagine the pickle it put them in, having to tell Andy. :)

They done good.

Jane

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I was informed but chose to stay out of the picture. Andy found me later...

The count is four if you include Andy.

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At BMR I had to tell Andy that their robot weighed 122 pounds. Andy said "What was the weight really?"
Chris is having way too much fun.

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Andy,

We distracted them as long as we could with our illegal bumpers, but they still found you.

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Yep, I've been ruling painted plastic tanks illegal for a couple of years now. You just can't tell what effect the chemicals in the paint are going to have on the strength of the plastic, and you never know what type paint was used. Wish the team had been at Smoky Mountain or Peachtree. Would have saved some grief at the Championships.

Dr. Bob

Chairman's Award is not about building the robot. Every team builds a robot.

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I lost count because I was distracted by Mr. Baker's eye wear configuration and the body language by all parties present.

Let me count the ways I love this photo...

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Seeing this picture just makes me wish I had a picture from North Star, when I got to tell Al his team's Bill of Materials didn't pass inspection :)

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I'm not in the picture because I was laughing so hard that I fell down ...... :)

Funny thing is that I lead the LRI training for pneumatics and pointed this sort of thing out to all the regional LRI's. Unfortunately Andy also was an instructor for another subject and didn't get to hear my training.

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It could have been worse. Not sure how, but I think you needed a few more LRIs in the huddle. It does show that the rules are the rules are the rules...... and sooner or later we run into somebody that knows the ones we missed (or maybe they have something against purple ;-).

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Yes, that true... but they were PURPLE, Bertucci! Purple!

:)

Jane

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If this is for real, it's moments like these that makes me *facepalm* at FIRST. Rules like disallowing the painting of pneumatics really detracts from the overall goal of FIRST. This isn't the way to inspire students to become engineers/scientists/etc. Way to drop the ball again, FIRST.

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While it's true that some rules (especially pneumatic rules) are what many of us would conciser overly strict and overly strictly enforced, they are there for a reason. Perhaps the inspector could have been more lenient in this instance, but the rule was almost certainly well thought out and enforced with the best intentions.

The specific rule that painting the tanks violated, I believe, was R-70, which prohibits modifying pneumatic components. While painting them might be considered a "labeling," one could certainly read the rules such that painting the tanks would be illegal. Imagine if FIRST hadn't put in place the rule. Some team would thin the tank walls down to save weight, only to have the tanks explode when the system was pressurized. Modifications, especially to pneumatic components, have the potential to be very unsafe.

No, this rule does not inspire future engineers. It simply was put in place and enforced to keep them safe.

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No it is to ensure we have future engineers that weren't injured by exploding pneumatics. As someone pointed out in the case of plastic tanks the solvents in the paint certainly have the potential to weaken the plastic. In the case of metal tanks paint could cover the fact that the tanks have been modified and people in the normal paint prep procedure often sand items first which of course would weaken them even if only slightly.

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There were several teams at Michigan district events that were told they were illegal for having stickers on their air tanks.

In one my more childish moments, I grabbed our triple-balance Lochness Monster sticker and slapped it right on our air tank, then went to each inspection just waiting for someone to say something.

We passed all of them, including champs. I definitely know a bit of what you were feeling in that picture.

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While it is true that some rules on the surface will make you want to facepalm, there is always a lesson to be learned from these rules. FIRST places constraints on what we may do to keep us safe and make the games challenging. Working to find solutions while keeping the rules in mind is how we students learn. It forces us to be more creative, to take a route other than the obvious one. This, in my opinion, is one of the many goals of FIRST.

I look back at my own blunders with rules like this one and see the impact that they have made on me. I have noticed that they make me consider all of the angles to a problem. Because of these rules I am a better problem solver.

I see these "facepalm" restrictions as an inspiration to work in a STEM field. People are given restrictions that fall under this category every day with little to no reason as to why these restrictions are put in place. This simulates the curveballs that people are thrown on the job. Working around these rules is fullfilling, especially when you have a creative solution. Sometimes it's just fun to hit a curveball, this is why I am inspired by these rules.


Thank you FIRST for throwing the odd curveball.

Thanks for reading,
Opinionated student :]

To OP,

We all have these moments.

Our robot fell over :eek:

Please excuse the blur, I found out that gravity was hungry for more than just robots:o

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well, to give a real world example, a teacher of mine told me that as a chemical engineer for 3M, they had a problem where the chemical they used to turn the sponges yellow was making them fall apart. so, they thought, why not just change the color, problem solved, right? nope, no one would buy different color sponges, therefore they had to find a new way around the problem. just saying, the "rules" in real life can be worthy of a *facepalm* too. so maybe these rules are helping us in some way by showing us that there are always going to be restrictions...some of them seemingly stupid.

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That's a story that is going to be told around the campfire for many years.

Re: pic: Sir, your robot is illegal
 

What exactly happened with this?

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Well,
It turned out that we had made a bunch of changes and had added the new stuff but never removed the old stuff. I think there was also some additions that we were thinking about adding but never did. Our mechanical lead had to go through the list and check everything against what was actually on the robot. I couldn't go near the pit for a while so I wouldn't laugh.

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I especially likes the several hundred dollar pneumatic cylinder from the BoM that never made it past the drawing board. It was good for a laugh for all of us there!

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That one we never did have enough weight to put on. The one that we did add never was used.

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Kinda reminds me of how I must of looked at Queen City when the LRI indicated our bumpers were a bit out of spec... Who was that anyway?

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I wish FIRST would stop calling them "Robot Rules" and start calling them "Robot Specifications", which is what they really are. Everyone thinks the rules apply only to others and want to argue about their own compliance.

In the real world, all engineers have to design to the customer's specifications, even if they don't make sense. In the real world, the customer (who, I might add, PAYS THE BILLS) sees the big picture and has a good reason why he wants the robot designed to his specifications.

FIRST can set whatever specifications it wants. They are our "customer." It is our job to design the robot to meet those specifications, not question them . . . or fuss about them!

Dr. Bob

Chairman's Award is not about building the robot. Every team builds a robot.

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I feel exactly the same way. After one whole summer (*gasp*) at Applied Materials as part of the IISME program in Silicon Valley, I'd learned very thoroughly that a spec is a spec is a spec, and to get over the fact that there might be a better way -- the customer already paid people to come up with the specs, and won't be interested in revisiting the discussion.

Remembering that a spec is a spec is a spec is how I manage to not go insane on a daily basis at the NYS Education regs or the Regents Physics curriculum.

...and we proudly displayed a shiny 'AndyMark' sticker on our air tanks throughout competition, and nobody commented one way or the other about it.