Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

I am hearing a lot of almost loosing finger stories, but I am curious to know if anyone actually has lost one working on a FIRST competition.

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

I only know of one major injury this year...

While cutting down a piece of metal to mount our cameras, one of our mentors, Matt, accidentally slipped and almost cut his finger off. He got rushed to the hospital and had about 9 or 10 stitches put in...

that incident, although very serious, Is now joked about by everyone, especially matt. It also earned him the nickname nine-fingers...

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

This year at peachtree some repairs had been done to the robot and we were testing it in the pit (the arm) to make sure it was working again. I worked but in the process it smacked one of the ream members in the top of the head. There was a nice gash in his head, but he was one of our drivers and we were being qued. He drove the robot with blood dripping down his face. After the match it was bandaged up and he was fine.

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

At the Denver Regional event, a limit switch was acting on the forklift arm on our bot, so we tried to fix it in the pit. Programming tried using a slightly modified program to fix it, and it ended up pulling the arm down way past its limit. The chain's turnbuckle snapped under the tension (stripped the threads clean off), and the chain whipped out a good 4-5 feet in front. Sent the turnbuckle screw flying a few pits over. Lucklily no one was in front of the bot when it snapped, so no one got hurt.

Those programmers will kill us all someday :)

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

I was the first and only (so far) to get hurt on my team. We were testing our ball gatherer, and I was trying to tighten a bolt. While I was doing this a fellow team member, who will remain nameless, was attaching a drill to make a roller spin. The fellow team member by accident pulled the trigger and the roller started with my hand inside. :ahh: My hand got stuck and was hit pretty hard(about 2000 rpm) with surgical tubing, that was added onto it for extra friction. I have a splint on my finger right now and most likely will have to get surgery after build season is done. :( At least I will never forget this year. :rolleyes:

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Two of our prototypes have blood on them. Does that count?

(Band-aid injuries -- drywall screws are very sharp.)

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Wow theres something we all need to watch out for :yikes:

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Last year.. I was sitting at a table behind the robot, making our auto mode.. I think you can figure out where this is going. Robot going full reverse at me. I also remember having to hold the robot back that year.. I probably ran the motors full speed at auto, and our power switch wasn't exactly in a good place.. couple inches from a drive wheel. So it was easier to hold the robot back and make someone else shut it off.

There was also that time our robot broke one of the encoders at a pre-ship competition.. so decided to disconnect the other one. This resulted in the robot going full speed across the field at the next match. No one got hurt there though.


This year.. well, we had just completed the drive train on our prototype, so I actually downloaded the drive code we use. One of the joysticks had been intentionally uncalibrated (With the default code, if you play with the calibration, it's a cheap way of making the motor run at a constant speed) I moved the PWM's around, and after the code got downloaded I had a robot going full speed towards a cabinet.

That was when I learned that the kitbot is pretty easy to hold back if you lift up the back wheels.

We made a very cool looking and easy to use disable switch this year.. Two of these .. Set up so that when the covers snap shut, everything gets disabled. :)

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

2004... A life changing experience

First off, may I say that its never a good thing when you hear someone shout "hey, look what i can do". The robot with the arm up comes out of nowhere and hits me. That was okay, but what happened next wasn't. The robot's controls were sensitive and i am 99% sure this was an accident but the arm swung into my head. The arm hit me and knocked my face into the concrete wall. I was down for a few minutes and someone claimed that I was unconcious for a while. For those of you who know me, this explains my eccentric personality .... :p (Suffered from a few bruises on my face)

Next, we have the pneumatic arms and autonomous. The programmer decided to try something new with the code in the pits. He was at the opposite side of the pit area and I was on the other side of the robot changing the battery. He asked me if i was out of the way, and I said no. He obviously didn't hear me. Not only did the extrude aluminum pin my leg against the table, but the nets for the ball hopper were opening and closing without limit at a very fast speed into my face. I was hit in the face about 4 times before they realized what was going on. (Suffered from a lump on my head)

Finally, we have the "omg, what was that" situation. I was scouting, like a good freshman ;) when it happened. I was talking to a team at their pit station and all of a sudden I hear, "heads up!". I must say, wow! That was perhaps the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. The team extended their 12ft arm all the way up and their hook was double pronged and it looked very sharp(I will never what it looked like :p ). The bot was unsteady and so it tipped forward. The hooks missed my face by about 3 inches. Had that have hit me, I really don't know what would have happened. The robot came crashing down and just wow. A lot of people rushed over b/c they saw my face go completely white(people thought I was going in shock), about 20 people asked me if I was okay.

Its great and at times humorous to share experiences from previous year, but also realize that these stories can be valuable safety tips. I know that based on what happened to me in 2004, I changed a lot of my safety habits. 2005 was incident free. :)

GO SAFETY!!!

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

I'll let my team website's "under-construction" gif explain our latest injury ;)



:ahh: SCOTTY! ... :o duck

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Last year when I was still on 1140, I was writing some code to "smooth out" the input from the joysticks so that I wouldn't see the death of the transmissions. I, the rookie that I was, assumed that PWM outputs center around 0...you programmers out there know what I'm talking about...anyhow, the code was running, I tapped Reset with a teammate working on the frame, and the 'bot plowed him over, leaving a huge bruise on his leg and pinning the bot under a desk, where there to this day is a huge gouge in the paint...oops.

I also was working a bug out at competition last year, where my code wasn't changing "states" during auton, and it turned out I was using an = instead of ==...I fixed it, but didn't have testing time, so the robot at the beginning of the match spun the turret until it smacked the plexiglass in front of the drivers with impressive force, drove out about 6 feet, and spun the turret about 5 times around in 2 seconds...ripped out the power to the compressor, the valve to open the pneumatic claw, and the team color lights. I was rejoicing because I found my bug, now I just had to work out the timing. The rest of the team didn't see it from my point of view... :yikes:

And then there's the time when we hit the head safety judge's hand with the end of the claw...I'll just leave it to your imagination. :-)

JBotAlan

P.S. YAY TESTING TIME!!!

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Ive only had two so far....

1) well im a rookie and when i joined the team the first thing i did was watched our main welder weld (thats what he does) and, well i sort of grabbed a piece of scorching hot metal :eek: i had a burn for two weeks.

2) while things were kind of slow around the shop we were tosing a poof ball back and forth and i backed into the corner of a table, hard! i ripped my pants, underwear and i put a big ole scratch right in my butt. GREAT WAY TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION TWORDS THE TEAM :rolleyes:

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

i don't know about the rest of the team, but I got a splinter when I was moving the board that had our processors on

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

Well. One time we where in zerox and we where in the loading bay testing the amount of ft the robot could extend and put tetras on the goal. well are robot was havin some problems.Like the joy stixs where REALLY TOUCHY. so our programmer Mr. *no name*had stepd under the robot. I dont think he remberd that the robot was still on. one of our Rookies, had gently taped the left stick. Well the robot LEAPED 5ft at our programer. and hit him smack dab in the middle of his forehead. and since hes tall if he was short like most of you ;) he wouldnt of gotten hit.

Second. this happend to me. Ok, i was given a job to buff up some of are supports for the A frame. well hehe i did what i was told i buffed them allong with my fingers. Man those buffers i tell you have some strenght in them....My hand was really shiny! and red...

Theres many more so ill just limit it to two (*_*)

~Doug,Commander of war storys.

Re: were there robot related injuries on your team?
 

i slit my thumb with a sheet of steel and it bled forever...earlier that day it was the senior blood drive and i fortunately didn't give blood because if i did then i would have prolly passed out from all the blood that i lost..it was very bad cut that is still currently healing