What's Your Most Unusual Field Debris?
 

At Columbus (PCH District) we had one robot drop a roll of Duct Tape (I wish I had gotten a photo of that) that rolled around the field during the match.

At Dalton (PCH District) we had a robot toss a battery and another drop a pair of vise grips.

And of course the usual robot poop ...

(photos attached)

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Our robot dropped the chain to the drivetrain and it actually helped us stay on the batter at the end of the match.

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Here's the most unusual piece of field debris I've ever seen. Skip to the 1:55 mark. Apparently the field breaking counts as field debris and not a field fault. This incident is the reason that FIRST changed from the old velcro gates to the current design. This incident also knocked our alliance out of elims... I'm not still bitter...

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At the CHS - Northern Virginia event there was a team which kept dropping marbles onto the field. It was a very creative design (thrust bearing for plywood, effectively) but there was too much slop in the mating surfaces. So when the robot went over a defense, out would pop a marble or two, or three...

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2014 Crossroads - Aerial Assist
A team had a baggie of lead shot that was being used as ballast inside a tube that was duct taped. The duct tape was punctured, causing the bag of lead shot to fall out onto the carpet and was ran over. Lead shot was literally everywhere on the carpet. The sound of a vacuum cleaner picking up 100s of lead shot is a very angry sound.

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A pair of child's safety glasses, from Pine Tree Regional 2013, though I also see a team button in that collection. Last year a robot popped a ball bearing. Those tiny things got everywhere and I was picking them up the rest of the day. This year it's been the pins that hold the defenses in place, but I guess that doesn't really count.

Looking at Ginger Power's video, yeah, that could have been the same problem we had at Boston's Northeastern competition -- same gate corner too. Some parent from the audience was yelling at me -- why didn't I fix it? :ahh:

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We had a fairly sizable sum of Sally Port zipties on the field at GSD this year.

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Most unusual: A large stuffed Duckie - No one claimed it so I carried it around to events for a few years until I finally lost it.

I regularly see screwdrivers, allen keys, wrenches, and all sorts of other tools that shouldn't be left in a robot. Though the most painful to cleanup was when a team broke their turret and lost all 150+ ball bearings on the field.

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Well, uh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg0y_hLmzXk

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You beat me to it. This match was crazy!

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I've found some interesting things over the years that make me go, "Eh, what?" or "How do you not know you are missing this?"

So far this year was a pressed bearing like comes from the outside of the live axles on the kit-bot, but with a neatly spun-off churro wedged inside it. The scary thing, other than that they were using churros for drive axles, is that I found 2 of them 15 or so matches apart. Each of the bearings had a partner VexPro 18t sprocket, complete with spun-off churro as well. No one ever claimed them from the parts box.

The time I remember most though is giving the same #25 master link twice to the same mentor. He couldn't believe that I had found and picked it up twice from the field.

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Not exactly field debris, but I did hear of a team going for elims reinspection being overweight... Turns out they had a roll of duct tape stuck to the bottom of their robot!

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We lost an air tank during a match this year.....

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We've dragged around aluminum tubing after it broke off our arm in 2012

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How did this even get trough inspection?

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Easy, it wasn't there during inspection. During maintenance a team member left the tool in the robot and forgot about it.

People would be surprised as to the number of tools that are found on the field at the end of a match, I would say it is on average 3-6 per competition, most of which go unclaimed. Normally they are screwdrivers, allen keys, and wrenches not crimpers, but the chain break was my favorite (that one was claimed by a very embarrassed student though)

At GTRC I found an 8" long punch in the field. At first I thought it was some tape that had rolled into a cone.

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I'm pretty sure they were referring to the other robot in the match (keep watching the video) that used duct tape a recycle bin and more duct tape and probably bailing wire.

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At UMass Dartmouth we left tons of broken parts (and maybe broken dreams?) on the field, including shattered carbon fiber, pvc, and even a ski or two.

One thing that almost happened was we left the huge classmate computer charger in the robot to bring to the driver station, and we completely forgot about it until right before the match.

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Yikes! I understand adding a extra function to your robot during competition, but that takes it to another level. Easily the sketchiest thing I have seen in FRC.

Edit: anyone else notice the roll of duct tape to the left of the robot? This match had more than a few issues.

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WOW!!

I'll admit, I had stopped watching after they zoomed in on the crimpers.

I'll second the question of how that passed inspection and ask the more important question of what the intended goal of that apparatus was?

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We use a 12" lazy susan that has about 100 ball bearings in it for our turret, well in the first two matches of the SCH district we snapped both them in half leaving 200 ball bearings on the field... they were finding them all weekend :p

The best part was when the field crew came over to our pit and said hey umm you left this on the field and just handed us two handfuls of ball bearings.

Re: What's Your Most Unusual Field Debris?
 

In 2009, we used a vertical helix as our way to gather and store the game pieces. Well, we used door stops on the center shaft to move the cells up and down the helix. I remember after quals ended in Atlanta at the World Championship, the head ref came up to us with a good size zip lock bag and asked us if these were ours. Suffice to say, we cleaned out our county of door stops for a good month or so in 2009.

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Back in 2012, this was found on the field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3FzCCJaJi0

*Skip to 3:30

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I wonder where that Roomba is today? Matt Glennon who is a on and off mentor for our team was field supervisor for Curie that year. You see him in the video (young skinny guy who puts his hat on after they pull the Roomba out.)

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The story was posted in another thread. Basically their intake and shooter had been destroyed in previous matches, and knowing they were about to lose, this was a last ditch effort at making a tall defense blocking robot. Tongue firmly in cheek, I would imagine. They had it re-weighed in and everything.

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Nothing quite matched the Roomba incident...though while on the subject of little robots trying to play around with their big brothers, a year previously, Logomotion fields had rogue minibots aplenty. Can anyone dredge up a video of a minibot from 2011 run amok?

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Does the Rock Wall count as debris?

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That is what many people wanted to know. There was another one like it at the same competition, but it did not fall apart yet it was not inspected. Big red card.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoteb8SJ8lc

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A team last year forgot to remove ice packs that were cooling their drive motors. Drove over them and had ice pack goop on the field for the rest of finals. Didn't change anything, but had many people worried when a mysterious liquid appeared on the field.

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Wasn't there an incident back in ancient FIRST where 111 tipped and sent ball bearings everywhere?

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Not sure about 111, but 341's Lazy Susan busted open during Qual 40 on Curie Field in 2009, resulting in ball bearing balls all over the FRP.

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Yep, and 341 also did the same thing to our turret bearing in 2006 at the Chesapeake Regional as well.

Incidentally, putting a 3 foot tall, 20 lb+ assembly on top of a McMaster lazy susan bearing with no additional support is not a good idea.

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I recall it being more like three bags (I was on field reset and counted three baggies of shot but one or two not punctured), but this incident is also my answer to the thread's question. What a mess... that took 20 minutes to clean up. *shakes head*

No, but I talked to some mentors from 868 last weekend who recalled that their turret in 2012 did that.

I also remember a year or two ago at an official Indiana event that there was a team that every match would loose a few ball bearings. Nobody could figure out who it was, but I'm sure they were in for a surprise once the missing bearing balls became apparent :yikes:

IIRC 1108 lost a go pro camera during a match at crossroads in 2014... I'm sure that made for some fun footage.

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Didn't a team leave a button on a tote last year and cause a whole fiasco based on it supporting the weight?

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Ah yes, the human player button that disqualified the stack because the stack was no longer "fully supported" by totes.

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Yes, a Human Player's drive team button fell off thier shirt, down the chute, past the chute door (yes, chute door), and onto the stack. *facepalm*

I can't remember which team or where it happened though

Re: What's Your Most Unusual Field Debris?
 

Yup. The robot inspector was judging us so hard. Also I hope this is not the only thing myou team will ever be remembered for.

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I saw a match on a webcast recently (maybe GTRE?) where one red alliance robot had slipcover style bumpers. The red fabric got hooked on something, probably a defense, and slowly peeled off as they drove across the field until it was all laid out in a line behind them on the floor of the opposing alliance's courtyard while they sat on the batter, fully blue.

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We found our driver's station charger on the field once.

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I completely forgot about that one. This was at Arizona West where I was the FTAA. The relief was palpable when the team fessed up to what it was that we were all crowding around trying to figure out what to do.

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But the video work was awesome!! Nice job!

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In Toronto somebody left their English homework behind.
They never came back to get it either.

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In the Lake Superior Regional this year, I looked down for a second and when I looked up, a battery was a good 4 ft from the robot it had come from. No one knew what had happened.

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There was a Hotel Loyalty card in the Robot Barf box at Lake Superior this year. Not a room key (which would also be odd) but someone's (probably a mentors) hotel program card. Hope they tracked their points online!

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Not sure if this is what you meant, but during the semifinals of the Colorado Regional, we dislodged the Rock Wall and traveled about 3 ft with it under the front of our bot before the match was halted due to a field fault. The match was replayed. In a previous match on Friday, we dislodged the moat, but it did not get stuck under our bot.

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At North Shore, our launcher decided to angle up while we were in the neutral zone. In order to challenge, we had to do the moat and left the chain on the back of it lying there. The master link was NOT a pretty sight.

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Acorns! :ahh:

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If there's a longer story behind this, I'd love to hear it.

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It was a mystery for most of the competition until I discovered what was going on. It turned out a driver carried them in his pocket and they would fall out when he set up the robot.

No cool robot use of acorns, though I'd love to see a creative use for them!

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Had someone do that at Ventura, too--matter of fact, that image from 900 matched it perfectly. Damaged the robot in question so we replayed the next morning.

Funny thing, the next match had to be replayed for the exact same reason (except the rock wall didn't leave the platform).

Had a pair of dikes on the field at Ventura, nobody claimed them to my knowledge.

I've seen some standards being picked up by the field crew.

But the best one had to be the robot that left 1/4 of their drivetrain on their own castle's batter while playing defense (4WD, with a pair of raised wheels in the middle for obstacles), which dragged that corner and raised the opposite wheel, so now they were a 2WD, and somehow managed to "limp" to their Secret Passage, get across the Neutral Zone, and make it for a Challenge. I was highly impressed.

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Wow! Amazing robot construction to be drivable like that, and good driver skill too for managing to get it to the batter!

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Please tell me that there's a match video of this! I'd love to see it!

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I'd have to remember the match number. It was one of the 4 Chinese teams. TBA doesn't have video yet (mock glare in the general direction of the webcasting team).

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In NYC, we had our intake roller fall off right during tele-op. It popped while crossing the moat. We didn't realize it fell until I went over to move the robot after the match and noticed it in the moat. :ahh:

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I saw this happen both at the PNW Wilsonville and Philomath districts. Big hits and going over the defenses fast has really taken a toll on battery holders. At least the batteries were disconnecting themselves instead of getting dragged.

If the Rock Wall counts as field debris, so does the moat. (PNW Wilsonville District, Qualification Matches)

EDIT: In the gif, you can even see the Head Ref reacting and turning to the FTA.


IMG_1618 by FIRSTWA Media Crew, on Flickr