Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

The one thing that I have guessed about the show is that all parts were located nearby. It didn't seem like they could get stuff from online.

Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

Actually...

*Ewhitman, mentor of Girls of Steel (FRC Team 3504), is a contestant on the show.

Gotta love McMaster-Carr's next-day-delivery.

Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

And that''s why I guessed.

Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

I don't know, I know that if my team tried to do so with the numbers you suggested and the time they are given, we would still have a lot of trouble with it.

Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

While we could get parts from anywhere, lead time was always a problem. This particular build started on a Friday and lasted 4 days. That meant the final day of our build was exactly 1 business day after the first day, severely limiting what components were available to us. Specifically, we had a ton of trouble getting motor controllers in time. I was close to begging local teams for Victors, but we were (before end-of-business on Friday, the first day) able to "next day" ship SyRens to arrive on Monday, the final day of the build.

It was not made clear on the show, but the goal of the javelin toss was not to throw it as far as possible. The producers knew we were capable of throwing it onto the street past the field. Instead, we were to aim for as close as possible to the human world record of 90.5 m. Our second and 3rd shot were 7 m short and 4 m long respectively.



As to whether a typical FIRST team could do it:
I would say we had about the same complexity as a FIRST robot, with 9 actuated degrees of freedom.

A FIRST build lasts 51 days, though the better teams can easily do it in less. We had 4, though they were 12-hour days.

FIRST teams use the same components from year to year, often iterating on previous designs, especially in the drivechain/chassis and electronics subsystems. We didn't even know we were building a robot ahead of time and were unable to source the components that we were familiar with in time. To use the same example as above, the SyRen motor controllers, which nobody on our team had ever used before, arrived Monday morning, about 10 hours before we had to finish.

The rest was probably no harder (or easier) than it looked. You can draw your own conclusions.



For more information and behind-the-scenes notes, go here:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~e.../TBBT/ep4.html

I, and many of the other contestants, write up notes each week. They're mostly all linked here:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ewhitman/TBBT/

Re: Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"
 

I don't want to say that FIRST is directly responsible for this (insert causation v.s. correlation argument here) but it actually seemed fairly clear to me which contestants had done FIRST before. For example, Amy immediately pointed out safety concerns when Dan was using the mill. Gui, Eric, and Amy were also by far the calmest among everyone when working and designing. I may have been seeing things but I think if you asked me to try and pick out three people that had done FIRST without any prior knowledge of the contestants I could have nailed it.