Best robots at Nationals
 

I'm sitting at home somewhat bummed about the fact that I was a booth member, meaning I only saw about 2/3 of the teams in Galileo. Franky, I was hoping to see more robots compete, but as I couldn't why not ask the people on CD about your favorites in your respective divisions?

In Galileo...

980 astounded me. In my opinion they had the best robot in our division. In autonomous they would grab the 2x, fold it back, and then trip whatever 10 pt ball they wanted to fall. Their arm was an marvel of engineering, its swivel captabilities were unbelievable.

469 could win any match by themselves. Most of you probably watched the finals, and saw how they could dominate by themselves. The matches between 93 and 496, as well as 177 and 496 were intense. Plenty of pushing matches, flipped robots, and tangling. for the record, 177 and 93 both also had superior bots.

358, in my opinion, was the best capper. They could effortlessly cap and uncap any goal, it was amusing in the final match when they and 469 ran around the field capping and uncapping eachother's goals. 358 also had one of the strongest and fastest drivetrains, I never saw anyone push them.

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I have to agree with that about 980, I wasn't at nationals, but 980 did compete at the SoCal Regional I attended, and I was even lucky enough to be allied with them during one match. They do have quite the robot, and their autonomous is amazingly effective.

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I was really impressed with team 67 (I think thats the number)...they had a nice, low profile chassis with an awesome arm. Great bot!

-Bill

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They built a second identical robot and spent all the time between ship and Phoenix programming, and all the time between Phoenix and LA practice driving. Very smart. Way to go 980!

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Yeah, i liked them too, which made it even more thrilling to beat them in the first round of quater finals, (nice job alliance 7).

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I don't recall ever being shocked by a robot. But 190 definitely :ahh: me. We were waiting for our match to start and I saw a match start with them without prior knoledge of what they did. As I saw them go on the ramp from the front in Auto, I thought to my self, "whoops". But then it got past the stationary goal "after bumping into the pvc and correcting itself" and turned, then I saw the hook pop out (mouth started opening). Then it pivoted facing perpedicular to the bar centered on the platform and latched the hook and hoisted itself up (mouth fully open). Then it opened it's wings and covered the bar completely on both sides as to forbid another hanger. All this in less then 15 seconds. I was SHOCKED! And later to hear it had four different systems guiding it on it's way. These guys have my personal WOW award. And what was even more shocking was that we got allied with them in the finals. I still can't figure out how we didn't go all the way. But there were some incredible teams and bots everywhere you looked.

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Wow! So question: was this their only auto mode?

Not that they need another, it's obviously impressive, and I guess their strategy was to get to the bar first to prevent anyone from hanging. But then their drivers never did anything? Just curious.

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No the WOW doesn't stop there! They could operate the bar cover flaps. These things could rotate around the axis of the bar, keeping the cover perpendicular to an opponents hook. And they could raise and lower either side. Then they had a long arm ball gripper that they used to block the opponents stationary goal from being capped. Also if needed they could remove the opponents capped ball and bring it over to their goal and cap it. ALL WHILE HANGING!! It was amazing....

While we were at the airport we met one of there mentors. He told me they had planned for it to grab the 2x ball in the middle platform on the way up and cap the opponents goal so they couldn't get any points during autonomous. I hope they continue to work on it after Nats and make that work also. That robot should go into a hall of fame or something.

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In Galileo 980 was definitely one of the best robots also does any one know the match numbers and division that team 190 was in I would love to see it do all those things.

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i loved 71's machine. i know it seems like an obvious choice but there was one thing that got me more than anything. the sides it used to push balls in were flat on both sides of their robot up to about 18". This meant that they couldn't possibly (as far as i know) go into the goal corral. very effective designing by the team from hammond. congratulations guys.

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That was pretty much our only auto mode, although we had a few variations such as going to the bar but not hanging (which we didn't in the first match of our practice rounds, since taking the robot down from the bar took too long). If everything went correctly, our driver's only job was to operate our Shields of Doom, raising or lowering them to allow our alliance partners on the bar. We originally had the ability to lower ourselves off the bar and play a ground game, but we found that we never used this, and removed the unlatching servos in Atlanta to save weight.

This was very similar to our ram, anchor, winch, and wait strategy in 2002, where our drivers only drove as fast as they could to grab two mobile goals in the first few seconds of the match, and then it was up to the operator to anchor to the carpet with file combs (back when this was legal), winch in the two goals we had snagged, and drive the minibot back to the home zone.

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469 was my personal favorite, they were able to get well over 100 points every match by themselves.

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We played against 67 in the NEWTON finals and came in 2nd to them. Their machine was just rock solid..quick..great hanger, solid autonomous mode.

Ken Leigh
Team 811 Contols Mentor
BGHS Nashua, NH

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

I only know of this one:
http://www.soap.circuitrunners.com/2.../cur_qf2m1.wmv

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

190 Was incredible, i was standing waitring for a match and i saw it climb up thinking it missed and then it moves arround the goal and hangs in auto , then it deployed shields to cover the bars and then it had a 2x arm to block caps ot move them I was Astonished. i never noticed it until then, There pit was right next to ours too

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if you want to talk about a nice robot, look at 254 and 60!

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Hanging in Auton is one hell of a feat, i wish i would have seen it, sadly i saw very few matches.
I saw wildstang do some pretty cool stuff like grab the 2x ball play a little defense force them selves up onto the platform drop a 2xball in from the platfrom to a near full goal and 3 seconds later they were hanging my jaw just dropped i was truley amazed.

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if there is a way i can find the autonomous mode video of team 190 i would really appreciate it...

robots that i think was awesome are ofcourse 71, 67, las gorillas, 177, 45... there were a lot of good robots... wish if i could remember all of their team numbers!

it was a great time at georgia dome.. and everybody did awesome...

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Team 79 their crab drive kicked mega butt.

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Team 45's ball collector had to be one of the best at the championship, and their 2x ball gripper is nearly impossible to "steal" balls from if they are centered in the gripper. They, and their partners came very close to winning Archimedes, and if they had, they would have been the favorites for winning the whole thing.

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

NEWTON-
After lookin at all the robots in the newton division, i would have to say that you cant just pick one great bot. ireally loved 67- outstanding is the only way to describe them, 1126- they were great at hanging constinently, 340- the rope amd pully system they to get on the bar was awesome, 303- the perfect none hanging bot- they capped so easily and gathered balls like it was nothing. i hope to see 67,1126, and 340 at cleveland again next year and maybe work with you guys. 303 good luck at ur regionals. good luck to all teams and have a relaxing off season.

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Though I may be a bit partial, I believe that 45 had the best offensive robot at Nationals. Our first three and fifth qualification match scores were 180, 190, 200, and 210, respectively. This was only with the help of a hanger. Also, we scored the highest score ever, 230, during the third semifinal round.

The best defensive robot out there was definitely 494, they made some very smart moves during elims and this led to their winning the event. Watch final match 3 on Archimedes, the best defensive bot vs. the best offensive bot. A great match, after which the final score was determined by the referees not counting the 2x because it was touching our claw. Too bad for us, great for 494. Great job guys. Your bot has tons of speed and your driver is great at manuvering it from 40+feet away.

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It's not the best video, but you can check out SOAP's archive of match 114 here. We should have some better video on the web soon.

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Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

190 definitely had one of the best robots there....i was really suprised they werent picked before we got to them...same thing with swamp thing...they had one of the best 2x ball grabbers in curie...but 190 was great to have because it was always an automatic 50 points....and they could also block the 2x ball from getting into the opponents goal....another robot i liked ever since i saw it was 71 the Beast....i watched videos from midwest regional and fell in love with that robot....hanging while capping....when i was watching them i told myself they are gonna do amazing at nats....and they did....congratulations team hammond

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I was amazed at the smoothness of operation and the elegance of team 67's design. How they hooked, released, and hung was a thing of beauty.

Andy B.

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Best hanger? I would say 47 Chief Delphi.

Some robots look like clunky machines when they are accomplishing a game objective. When the Chief hung it was a thing of beauty. Effective and elegant their robot was up in the air in seconds.

EDIT: It just occured to me how similar my post looks to Andy B's. It was purely accidental ;)

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Nothing at all against 47, cause i loved their robot, but i thought there were much better hangers. For example team number 190...hanging in auto, i believe they hung every match, and they could do other things while hanging, i feel they were the best hanger. Like I said nothing against CD, just i feel 190 was definetly better. I'd also like to give a shoutout to 1218, cause those guys stepped it up. In chesapeake they could hardly get up a step and at nationals finishing FIRST (lol) in their division and making it to the NATIONAL FINALS is an amazing feat...GOOD JOB GUYS!!!

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The Gila Monster Team (I can't remember the number) had an impressive robot in Gallileo. It would hang and then use a motor and wheels to move aroud on the bar, blocking others from hanging. While they might not have been the best they do deserve at least a comment.

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330 had a nice robot it got on the bottom platform in autonomus. They kept us from hanging while they were on the bar. it seems they can move on the bar. even though i still havent figured out how they do that.

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I really liked team 60's robot. It look really nice and it could cap amazingly well. Towards the end of the robot season they were able to hang alot better.
Oh, and about how our robot moves along the bar. We used a chaneled wheele that we custom machined. We had a special gear box that was run by a van dor motor.
^not sure how to spell that.

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Over in Archimedes, 33 rocked my socks off. With so many balls to the HP, who needs capping?

And I can't forget 1396, the one-day wonder.

And 494 and company--their alliance was off the heezy for sheezy.

And that one practice match with all of those robots...wait a second...those were humans! (There weren't any robots for the match, so the volunteers started feeding them balls. I joined in...and was promptly bonked on the head by a few balls.)

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My list of awesome bots this year are

71 and 494 <-- Love the alliance partners hehe
33,45,60,111,237,310,900(fellow NC team and awesome D bot),945

Many others but I forgot there numbers tons of great bots this year.

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Zzyzx,

The Gila monsters are Team 64 from Mesa, Arizona. In our second match we had a spectular fall from the bar to the platforms below. The fall limited some of the other functions of the robot. Thank you for your kind words.

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I can't say who had the best robot this year.. I'm not that good. However, I stand by my favorites:

33 -- Tough break for you guys in the Archimedes elims. I just watched all your archived matches, and you guys still amaze me. You consistently knocked off the 10 point ball in autonomous and delivered a massive amount of balls to your human player. I saw you guys get around major defense, picking up many balls and delivering them just the same. The defense perhaps stalled your plans by 5-10 seconds. Your hanger also wasn't that bad at all. For something put together at the last minute, it did function better than some of the other mechanisms I've seen this year. On a down note, your method of getting on the ramp made it easier to prevent you from hanging. All around, you guys are still my favorite :).

45 -- Tough break for you guys as well. You do balls just as well as 33, but in a smaller amount of space. Once you slurp the big ball, your control of it is deadly. I dunno, you guys were just really amazing.

469 -- Your drivers were top notch. They squeezed every bit of ability out of your robot. Amazing.

71 -- I'll admit right out, you guys weren't a favorite of mine. At all. I thought a 45 + 71 alliance would've done well at MWR and that a 33 + 71 would've happened at the Championship Event, because 45 would've been taken in the first round by the number one seed, but I'm finally beginning to understand that not all things happen the way you think. Your driveteam knows what they are doing.

Among the best, in my mind: 33, 45, 571, 60, 254. I'll leave the other teams for other posters to make known. A personal top 5 is good enough for me.

PS: Can we see a 60 + 45 vs. 33 + 71 at this year's IRI? It could be in the qualification or elimination rounds, I don't care. I just want to finally know what would have happened.

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Thats right, team 930, getting a hang in on 190, under their flaps in match 114. Too bad the camera man doesnt focus on it at all. I would have like to have delphi try to hang on us, along with a lot of other curie teams but we didnt make it to the finals this time. Oh well, there is always iri.

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Is 60 making the IRI trip?

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I too must say that team 190 had one amazing robot! I was in awe when i walked up to go to a match, and saw them going to hang. Of course I thought "what else is new" until I looked at the timer on the side which read 113, where I began drooling...

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Eh... I don't know. Right now it's not looking like it'll happen, but I really would love for us to make a trip out there.

I'd also like to commend 980 and 330 for their awesome designs! They are just absolutely amazing! It's great being able to work with them!

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60/254- I loved the bot. It was perfectly put together. I loved the tranny even though we have the same exact one. One of you should have won.

190- Beutiful auton. Probably the best i have ever seen. Good defense.

330-Very good hanger. The best bar defender I've seen. Loved getting to finals with you guys in L.A

980-Very nice auton. best capper I've seen. Good opponent in L.A in the finals.

Some of you may have seen 69 in some competetion. Nice capper and hanger.

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

i think that some of the best bots werent the memorable ones personally...237 pops into mind with that sliding device (which came this | | close to knocking us off in the semifinals) was uber-awesome....some of the other teams tried that but none had such an effective device, which blocked bots that even tried to hang on them (eg 494 which i do not dispute good call by them refs)...

maybe im biased but i loved the fun robots...not the high scorers....voltage (which did good dont get me wrong) was fun to watch with that swingy thing they had to uncap opponents goals....he he he it was enjoyable to know that somebody had rememberd the defensive robots.....

the usuals all still apply tho....glad we didnt have to play 33 cuz wow they were awesome and i was surprised at their loss.....plus 330 was fun to watch...45 was such an awesome robot and was fun to play with and against....im just a fun loving guy i guess cuz it wasnt the effective ones that did it for me but the ones that put on a good show

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from arch only (because i didnt get to see many others xcept on einstien)

33, 45, 60, 71, 237 (if they make the shimming faster they would be unstopable), a few others... mind hurts right now, not a good time to think lol .... i hate first day back at school

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Team 190 hung in almost every match, but they fell over in a match against us, match 39. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I think they may have gone off the edge of the platform. They hung in every other match that I saw them play, and it was quite impressive to get that level of consistancy.

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Thanks for the kind words about our team. In autonomous in S. California, we grabbed the yellow ball and used it to hit the 10 pt ball. Our percentage for getting the yellow ball was 7/8 but 1/3 for hitting the 10 pt ball.

At the championship, we added a small lexan arm to knock off the 10 pt. At some point in the competition, we discovered that we had been adjusting the variable for our left side autonomous when trying to correct our right side. We finally got that bug out, but unfortunately still didn't have it fined tuned quite enough. We released the balls for both teams in our first Galileo quarter finals, filling Team 177's basket for them. We then lost that match 150 to 140 (with both stationary goals capped). In our next match, we got it right, but, althought we did cap the goal, 177 played the best defensive game that we had run into and prevented us from hanging.

Still last year, we weren't even picked for the elimination rounds, so being second seed in Galileo was a big step up for us. Thank you to all our partners for the great matches. We had the 3 highest scores in Galileo: 190 pts with Team 141, 195 pts with Team 93 and 210 pts with Team 782 and a total qualifying score of 950 (second only to Team 45's total qualifying score of 955).

It was very hard for us to pick partners from so many great teams. Hope to pair with you all again in the future.

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Thanks for all the kind words! I think we hung all but two times at the Champs. And actually, our robot is only 24" wide, so it is designed to fit between the goal and edge of the platform and lots of wheels in case it does hang over the edge. We actually tipped because we hit the goal and the robot continued it's autonomous operations and took a turn for the worst down the stairs. We were looking forward to attempting to block 233 (a great hanger!) but didn't get the chance. Consistency didn't come easy, but at least it did eventually!

As for great bots, I've have to say..

126- Man, they were outscoring people with small balls even with one robot dedicated to defend them! Also, they were one of few teams who had a skilled HP to match the ball-handling abilities of their robot. It was a deadly combination.

980- Awesome in AZ, awesome at the Championship. 190 is hoping we can partner with you if you come to Battlecry!

330- I love the challenge of someone with a similar strategy. Great robot!

And many more, but those are definitely 3 of my favorites from this year.

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You can't begin to imagine the strategy that went into those two matches. We were dreading having to go up against you guys in the first round. We took a big chance betting that you guys would hit the ten point ball for us, if you hadn't I think we all know what would have happened... Great robot guys

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I agree, 980 was an awesome robot. When i had to scout them my mouth was wide open. Their team members are awesome too. We're so lucky they picked us.


Melissa

Archimdes
 

Hey I wanted to say congratulations to teams, 71, 494, Robo dogs for winning nationals. I would also like to say what a great job our partners 45, 1272 did. :yikes: For rookies you guys are awesome, what an amazing first year you guys had. Both teams had a great drive team and we really had a great time working with you. Thank you for a great competition. :) Congratulations see you all in the offseason. :D :cool:

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I don't think I could single out any one robot from archimedes. We all did an awesome job and I know I had a great time watching them while waiting for matches. Maybe, I believe, 1369 or 1396. One of them had to build their robot in ONE DAY and it turned out to be one of the best herders! I really wish I could remember which of them it was, but their pits were right next to eachother and the numbers are so close that I can't remember. Along with being a great bot, they were a great team. They were always ahead of us in the queuing line and I had the pleasure of watching them, waiting for my match. Their spirit, intensity and sense of fun was astounding considering the circumstances. Could somebody tell me which team it really was?

Good job to everybody! Archi-!! -Medes!!! We all did a great job!

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

1396

The team numbers were so close that the announcer mixed them up a few times. Including Friday morning when they were trying to rebuild a transmission and suddenly thought they had to be on the field.

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That stinks. Yeah, my friend and I wanted to give them hugs because we thought they definately deserved them. I ended up hugging a Minotaur, not remembering that it was two different teams. Well, I made some guy happy with on that team :)

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

lol, so that hug wasn't intended for me? oh well, better than nothin', i guess...
i found it kinda distressing how many people got us mixed up. i thought our robot looked pretty good, but apperently it looked like something that coulda been built in one day (assuming you had a CNC, 20 spur gears, a crapload of bearings, and a 24" stroke cylinder lying around...)

it wasn't much better for us. we were sitting in our pit waiting for our match to be called (wondering why they were so late) when they went from "team 1396 final call" to "team 1369 final FINAL call". the funny thing was that someone had just asked me (seconds before) if we'd been called yet, and i had told them that i was sure that we hadn't. woops...:rolleyes:

my top five would probably be 64, 121, 67, 25, 494. see my complete list here

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The best autonomous modes I thought were 980 and 190 hands down... although I never got to see 190 in person, only on video.

Otherwise, Galileo: 980 (capping) , 177 (balls) , and 93 (ball drop catching) were consistently impressive. 868 and 1305 each hung in at least 6 of the qualifying rounds.

Archimedes: 111 (capping and hanging), 33 (balls and hanging), 45 (balls and capping for the most part), 71 (the capping while hanging thing is still just plain awesome...), and I still love 1241.

Newton: HOT bot (67) will always be my favorite bot from watching the finals over there :) so much fun to watch with all the different things they did.

Curie I didn't get to see :(

Hard to choose just a few BEST robots when there were so many good ones...

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Aww, I'm sorry. But it was nice giving you a hug anyway. I probably would have ended up hugging you at one point later on for one reason or another. :D

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That must have been quite a sprint to get to the Archimedes field in time!
I tried a couple of times to walk around to the Archimedes field in time to catch a match and found the match had been played and the robots had already returned to the pits.

I think you deserved your hug.

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I was ref at Curie - the robots that stood out were 233, 47, 312 and 190 of course. I also liked Children of the swamp. 175 and their alliance were pretty amazing, but I think Buzz got a couple of bad close calls because of their hanging mechanism design - I think that made them decide not to hang or put much effort into hanging - if they had they might of ended up winning it all.

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I have to agree with u dude. 190 was a great robot. It had a perfect atonomous mode. PERFECT. i'm so glad that we were able to pick u guys. I wish we could have done better and betten Buzz. O well, there's always next year. I cant wait to see what 190 comes up with, there robot has definately put them in the catagory of robots to watch out for and admire.

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yes most definetly

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Hey, we were lucky that you agreed. You had an amazingly fast robot with great hanging/decapping capabilities.

We certainly had an exciting match together. Losing by 1 ball is no disgrace in my book. One of our mentors told me that 2 balls went out the back of our goal.

Hope to partner with you folks again and take it all the way next time! :)

Thanks also to Team 971. Very reliable hanger, and really fast getting onto the platform. I loved those swivelling track drives. (We could have used some of those.)

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there were many great robots at nats...but 16, 25, 33, 45, 47, 71, 111, 175, 190, 222, 237, 303 and many many many others....these are just the ones that stick out in my mind

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Team 67 was a good robot, they had a solid design, there atonomous mode was very good. But I only seen one team that had a little suprise for team 67 Atonomous mode. :D

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Hmm... one robot that has not gotten ANYWHERE near enough praise is 175. they improved phenominally throughout the competitions, and I really think that they had one of the toughest climbs (other than 1396) to the top of any team there. why? well, in the BAE regional, defense and hanging were the big factors determining successful teams. BUZZ, as many of you know, has a small ball collecting robot, and a 2x manipulator. however, one area it was weak in was torque. though the power outputs were probably changed, any amount of defense quickly negated the threat of BUZZ in a match at the BAE regional. at that point they did not hang(?) they ranked decently at 21st, but not as high as they did at UTC (6th) 138 selected them and 40 and proceeded to get to the final match set (which was very close. Buzz was the deciding factor in the only victory against 501's alliance)

then at nats, like 138, BUZZ was met with quite a bit of hard luck when it came to matches, their record was 3-3-1 (138's who selected them in NH was 2-4-1)

When they were selected in an alliance, I was happy because I believed people REALLY needed to se the power of that machine, and they did... to a point. as I've said enough times, it is the alliance that wins matches. though 1038 and 1388 had to have served their functions well to get where they were, it was BUZZ on the floor EVERY SINGLE TIME. BUZZ carried their own, and scored so many points it made my head spin.

all in all (sorry for the long post) BUZZ made a wonderful bot and married that perfectly with a good operation crew and human player.

just thought they needed a little public praise

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

Buzz was absolutely awesome, which is why they were in every single one of their alliance's matches from the Curie quarterfinals to the Einstein semifinals. We certainly would not have made it as far as we did without them.

Re: Best robots at Nationals
 

I thought 33, 67, 45, and 71 were awsome robots. great designs and everything.