Your Best Robot
 

OK so we had the debate about what is the best robot ever in FIRST. But for the rest of us mere mortals who are not 71,254,111 or those other great teams what is the best robot (in your opinion) that your own team has put on the field in it's history?

Re: Your Best Robot
 

hm.... maybe... this years?


This isn't a very fun topic for anyone on a rookie team :p

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'd have to say that this years was the best from team 1510. I was a co-founder so I've seen all its done in the past three years. The first year's robot did become a finalist in the Curie division, and last years did get the xerox creativity award and make it into the FIRST "Behind the design" book, but this years robot was very clean, very professional, and just plain wonderful. It was also the first year we got it powder coated (i was so happy with the bright red xD) Autonomous worked 99.99% of the time, and after a few modifications it was putting on tubes as well as a lot of other teams. We didn't win anything, but i'd have to say based on team members, team commitment, and the product (Red Kiss) this year was definatly the best.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well in my opinion our best robot was our 2005 robot X-WhAAAt?
One for the obviously reason: It won our one and only regional win ever but there's more to it than just that.

-It opened up a new era of robot building for our team. In the previous 13 years we had decent robots. But in the last three we've had success that we never would have even dreamed of before the 2005 season. And the catalyst was of all things Xerox significantly slashing our budget and causing us to have to go with a much smaller team than in the past. Suddenly we had to streamline our processes and become more efficient at building and lo and behold! Not only did we build a competitive robot but we built a pratice bot as well!

- It has what I consider the coolest feature we have ever built on any robot we had. The arm and particularly the claw, which was instrumantal in the design of this years robot which I think is the second best machine we've ever had.

- The "iconic" name and accompanying cheer that everone seems to remember ( ANNOUNCER:X-WhAAAt? X-CAT: YE-AH! ANNOUNCER: X-WhAAt? X-CATS: OK!). WHen our coach and spirit leader pushed for the name the mentors we're not overjoyed that this weird name was going to represent our robot but Lizzie and Brittany prresented their reasoning for the name and convinced the mentors and the team of it's merits and won them over.
The rest is history.

-The first robot we had that used our trademark "Spirit numbers". Could be a problem next year as Mike didn't put up may FLR pictures at all. So I may have to be clever about it.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

in my experience - 2003
overall - 1996

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well look it as room for improvement.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Hmm, best or most successful? For the latter, ours is our '03 robot, but it was just a box on wheels. Best is this year, by far. This year's robot has a 270 degree turret, really fast and effective pneumatic claw, speedy two stage lift using linear ball bearings, ~180 degree wrist, fast ~160 degree arm, as well as limit switches and pots on all actuations. Looking through our robot 'garage' you won't find any other robot that has one of these features much less all of them

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'm gonna go our 2006 robot, Dori the Punisher, barely pictured in my avatar. Though she couldn't score in the high goal, she was effective as a dumper and she was an amazing defensive bot, which led to our only regional win in LA last year. That day was one of the most fun days of my life.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well, having been on 2 very different teams (67 & 1504) I have 2 very different answers.

Best in terms of most successful? HOT, 2004, the year I graduated. That machine could do anything, and until the cord was smashed into with the robot 6 feet in the air, it was unbreakable. That machine was amazing.

In terms of most fun, I'd have to say Herbie, aka the Little Robot that Could, 1504's 2006 robot. That thing would go out and score 30-40 points and because it wasn't shooting them up in the air, no one would have any idea. So the other alliance would think they'd won the match, and then the score would come up and we had won by like, 20. The looks on some of their faces were hilarious. :D

Re: Your Best Robot
 

2007 was our best robot so far. At both of our regionals (St. Louis and Boilermaker) we seeded well enough to be or become an alliance captain, then accepted an invitation from a higher-seeded A.C. Our scoring was the best we've achieved so far, and our reliability was excellent -- only one relatively minor breakdown, easily fixed. Twice a regional semifinalist. We've made it that far before, but this year we felt like we contributed more to our alliances' wins. Now that we've started to taste success on the field, we will be hungry for more of it next year.

And our 2007 team performance was even better, yielding the second regional CA in our six-year history. :)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Would have to be this year's robot. Only our second year, we seeded well enough to be the 7th ranked alliance at the Las Vegas regional. Our robot was liked enough to be chosen to an alliance by both 116 and 233 at regional competitions. Then we played great at the World Championships, was quite happy with our improvements over last year (though last year our robot took us to the World Rookie All-Star award, so it wasn't too bad either :D).

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I would definately say that team 1726's robot this year was far better than our rookie bot from last year. It wasn't as successful, but much more engineering went into it and it performed much better. Also, this year's robot has a killer drive train; I can't think of any ways to improve it!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

for MORT:

'04 - Palmetto Regional Champion - Beast of a drivetrain combined with excellent driving and strategy
'05 - Innovative drivetrain and wedge design, effective capping ability, agile


for the NUTRONs:

'01 - National Champion - 1st overall pick...enough said
'07- Boston Regional Champion - Dominant capper - 3rd highest tube avg in archimedes (behind 254 and 233)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I think I have to say that our 2007 robot is our best robot yet as much as I like our 05 as well. The 2007 robot has one silver and one gold to it's credit (palmetto and Florida regionals) and 2 design awards one motorola qualtity and one Gm industrial design award. The 2007 was by far our most competitive at championship so far.

-Drew

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'm a little bit torn, because our 2007 bot definitely wasn't the hardest of our robots to build (it was probably the easiest in my tenure aside of 2006), but that simplicity made it by far the most effective.

In our 12 year history, this bot became only our third alliance captain, and fourth alliance era elimination competitor. It also became our first bot to be selected in the first round (twice, although we declined at VCU), and our first to make the elimination at Championship during the alliance era. Our 2006 autonomous may have been more reliable, but this was certainly a much harder challenge than a corner dump, and certainly a lot more fun to watch, and we still managed to score six keepers. Our team has had a history of being in high scoring matches in recent years (sometimes on the wrong side), and ED v. 8.0 kept that tradition, putting up the high scores at both VCU (108) and Galileo (271). It was one of the few times we've been a real target of defense (our previous best bot was in 2001, where there was no defense), and aside of a couple excellent defenders (122 and 703 namely) we managed to cope very well. I still remember a match at championship where we got a tube stuck on our flag and our chain came off (and wedged itself between our sprocket and frame, totally immobilizing that half the drive).....and they still had a defender on us the entire time. It was the first time we had people coming up to tell us they expected us to win the regional (sadly we didn't...and sadly that attention may have been our downfall).

ED v. 8.0 was engineered better than most of our bots, and accomplished tasks with simplicity and elegance. While it didn't have our 2003-2004 custom 2-speeds, it did use an AndyMark shifters, each with 2 small CIMs. It had a 6WD, using 6" AM Performance wheels, with nitrile roughtop tread (much more durable than our rubber wedgetop that we used last year), and approximate speeds of ~10fps and ~4fps. It also was capable of climbing every ramp we attempted.

We once again used our award-winning modular control box design developed in the summer of 2004, but added new features (including a LCD display for basic diagnostics and autonomous play selection/parameters).

Our arm had only 2 points of rotation, at the shoulder and wrist. The shoulder was powered by two globe motors at a speed fast enough we decided to reduce it in our controls (but with more than adequate torque). Both our pinching gripper and wrist were actuated by pneumatics, and rotated around the same point. The arm had a single-time telescoping extension (powered by surgical tubing) that would fire at the beginning of the match then latch in the extended position, allowing for us to pick up off the ground, start with a keeper in our grasp, and score on all three levels.

Our autonomous was dead reckoning for all of VCU, and for our first few matches at Championship, but when we got our camera fully operational, it jumped in accuracy greatly (2x as many hits in <1/3 the attempts). Our autonomous was guided mainly by our camera and gyro (and the potentiometer on our arm), and once we had the camera operational, we were one of the most reliable auto team on Galileo.

It was also one of our most robust and reliable machines, experiencing very few failures of any kind during the season (and none we couldn't fix).

We also had a lift system that functioned, but never made it onto the robot (due to some issues with figuring out how to have both the platforms and start with a keeper, among other issues).
2007 was a good year for 116 in many regards, and this robot was our best.

Pics:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/185/4...e904f4.jpg?v=0

Re: Your Best Robot
 

From what I have seen, 166's best robot to date came from 2003.

This robot was one of few to use a two-speed transmission. Once the team got autonomous working it flew right to the wall of boxes and beat almost everyone to the top. The two speed transmission made it easy to push many boxes up and over the ramp. (~10 at a time IIRC) It was then able to hold it's own on the top of the ramp.

It didn't do too well during the official season, however it won almost all of the off season competitions it attended, including Battlecry 4.

Edit: I forgot to mention a few things. Although the team won most of the matches, they ranked lower than they should (mid-teens) because of the way ranking was done. 2x opponent's score + own score. That robot was almost too good. It often won matches with scores like 90 (in this year, 90 was quite significant, to 3 or so.

Yep.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For 987
I liked many things about our robot this year, we tried alot of new things this year ex. we went 6 wheels and our own two speed transmission for the first time.

but I personally liked the 06' bot ACE the best. I thought it was really fun to watch.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For cyber blue 234 this was our best year and our best robot without a doubt.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For 971, our most successful was 2004 (1st seed, regional winner), but the 07 robot was by far the best engineered and best machined that they've built to date.

For 190....that's a hard one. 2004 has been my personal favorite, with the awesome autonomous mode, but the 07, 99, and 92 robots have arguably been the most successful as far as competitions go.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For Team 1501 IMHO the 2006 robot was the best.
Had an awesome autonomous mode. We could score 8-10 balls each time.
The camera would lock onto the light and know how far it was from the goal by the angle of the camera and using a gear tooth sensor would adjust the speed of the shooter to allow us to be moving forward or backwards and still put every ball into the goal.
It had a failsafe that would not allow it to shoot if it did not see the light. This would keep us from firing balls into the crowd.
The camera was also set up to ignore every light but the green light. For testing we would pass a lit fluorescent light in front of the green light and the camera would not see it.

And last, but not least....WE GOT PUBLISHED!!!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Out of the 4 years that i have been on the team I would say this years is the best. Also our mentor who has been observing the team from its first year said this years was the best. We had a robot that not only did the task, it did it well. We had scoring arm that was fast and reliable that scored on the first row we scored 7 in a row all by ourselves a few times, and we had a ramp that was capable of holding 2 robots about 12 inches. The ramps work the way they were supposed to, but some teams had some trouble getting up. For the first time ever we finished the robot early and we were able to work some of the bugs out. Also for the first time we were able to get it powder coated, which made the robot the best looking robot the team has had.
We still don't have the best robot though, there are minor problems that we had, like people have trouble on the ramp, but no one is prefect every robot out there has its problems. But one thing that does happen to everyone is that they learn from there mistakes, and the next year plan things better. Every year we say we have the best robot that the team has had, and every year after we build something better.
Another thing we found out is that even though you have the best running, looking robot that you have ever had, doesn't mean you will win. And if you have a robot that doesn't do anything but defense, and isn't the best, don't think your out of the game, because those robot preform just as well as the best scoring running robots, and can bring home a win.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

173: 2005. The robot had enormous potential, a good deal of which was realized.. 2002 if only counting the years I was on the team.
229: 2005. Not even a doubt.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For 177, I think that the 2001 robot was our best. Very simple to build maintain and drive. Pretty well suited to the game as well. It edges out the 1998 robot which took more effort to build and was much harder to drive (Doug and Jessie just made it look easy).

Re: Your Best Robot
 

This year by far, even though our awards don't show it. Last year, we had a sweet shooter that turreted and tilted to shoot from any position on the field, but it shot the balls at a slow rate (about 1 per second), thus eliminating our competitiveness.

We learned from our mistakes last year, and focused on making this year's robot as quick of a scorer as possible. We made to my knowledge the only double-jointed, unfolding, lock-in elevator arm in FIRST, which started at 4 feet and unfolded out to 10. (for video of the arm unfolding check out this match, we're the robot in the middle on the right hand side) The grabber picked up off the ground fairly quickly and we scored quickly as well. We averaged around 4.5 ringers per match at the 3 regionals we attended, which is pretty good for this years game and all of the defense going on.

Even though we only won 2 awards this year, as opposed to 8 last year, I still think we moved light years ahead into becoming a real powerhouse on the field. Hopefully next year, even though I'll be gone, the team will keep a mindset of speed and simplicity and build another competitive machine.

Mike C.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I know of at least 2 more at BAE, 172 and another.

On the topic of best team robot, our 2004 robot was the most autonomous competition robot I've ever seen or heard about.
Complexity is the way to go!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

2005 was our best year:D . We won a the SPBLI regional and were finalists in the Philadelphia Regional. It was my favorite game too.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

although this is my first year on our team, i have been to other year's competitions and i would still have to say that this year's robot was the best, the chassis worked great, the arm worked smoothly, and the auto-mode was a success!!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Our 2005 robot ("Low Rider") was probably our best from an engineering and performing in the game aspect. At the regional it was OK but suffered from the tetras getting hooked incorrectly on the arm if they swung too much. So we were about .500. At the Championships we made one little fix and ended up with a bot that went 7-2 and came within inches of winning in the two losses. We were scoring consistently all over the field. It was certainly not near the best robot there, but it did its job very well. Drove well, scored quickly and pretty much never broke. We ended up spending a lot of time in the pits sitting around. Which was particularly gratifying because at the start of that season we made a conscious effort to build a robust robot (following Woodie's admonition) that would not break as often as the previous year's cool looking but not so cool performing robot.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I've got to give it to our 2005 robot Carlson X

Two years later and still running with no major mechanical failures. Hacksaw & Drill in all its glory.

From what I've learned our original rookie bot 465's 2000 robot Zeuswas our best ever untill it got flipped over the bar in the Great Lakes quarterfinals.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

648's long list of "best" robots include:

2002: "The Shopping Cart" - This robot was completely amazing to watch. It sucked up those soccer balls and filled the basket very quickly and efficiently. We used a transmission, the first and only year we did that. There was a goal lift on the latching mechanism to transfer the weight for traction gain.

2004: "Napoleon" - This was a fun robot to drive. I loved hanging with this robot and it was the first robot to get major success in game, until we got wiped by the Technokat alliance in Chicago. This bot was also the 7th seed in Archimedes at Championship.

2005: "Alexander the Great" - There were absolutely no failures what-so-ever with this robot and it still runs the way it was built to. This robot extended outwards for stability instead of flopping over. It won us the Xerox Creativity Award and silver in StL, as well as a controversial semi-final loss in Chicago that year. It was soooo fun to drive this robot around.

2007: "Spartacus" - This was our first attempt at crab steer. We had mild success with autonomous. We also won the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award in Chicago and yet another silver medal, first overall draft pick and top scorer in Midwest. Had no success in Atlanta, though.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Without a doubt I will say our 2005 robot, which has no name other than "the '05 bot".
Aside from winning the PWN regional that year (with 492 and 1595), it still remains as our toughest robot ever built. It is built like a tank and we can always count on it to be able to drive when we need it, while our 2006 and 2007 robots have had problems. It still lives on in this year's chassis, and will likely continue to be that way for a long time.
It was designed for pushing rather than speed, but that was perfect when capping tetras. It also marked the first year of our signature lightning bolt wheels, in 2005 and in 2006.
The greatest thing of all is that it became our most recognizable robot after we added a t-shirt launcher onto the robot for our high school homecoming football game.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For my high school team, 93, the most successful robot was my senior year in 05. Finalist at one regional and Champs at another. But the best robot i would have to say was our robot in 2002.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well, we only have two robots...but I'd say the better of the two was this year's robot. Last year we won a regional and seeded 6th in Archimedes, but our robot was very basic. We had a nice corner goal autonomous that never missed and good defense, but that was the extent of it.

My team is very proud of our 2007 robot. We picked the best strategy for our team and went with it. It worked out beautifully. We knew we could build a solid defensive/ramp bot. We used pneumatics on this year's robot, a given for some teams but a step for us. We had almost no wood on the robot, and even used welding! We also used 4 CIMs (unfortunately with the BaneBots). We had a semifinal finish at our regional that was cut short by BaneBots failure, so we knew we could do well at the Championship. We ended proving ourselves (I think) to be one of the most consistent lifters around, and ended up a division finalist, better than we could ever have expected.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

i would say are 2005 robot hunter and our n2007 robot.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Gloria Machina, 675's '07 bot.

Last year was really good and the best until now. Cthulhu worked great, and scored okay.

This year, we upped the ante.

Only one team we encountered could push us ('grats to 1662 -- Raptor Force Engineering), but aside from that, we were really good.

Tonight, Gloria saw some more... Family-oriented action. We had a cake Auction to raise money for robotics, and we drove the cakes on our competition robot, like last year. Take that, PR Robots!

Tomorrow, Gloria will be being driven around at a Lego Robotics event. =D



Anywho, it's a good, robust, yet simple bot that meets all FIRST guidelines almost perfectly, performs a valuable game strategy, and was built well.

Expect us to be pulling something like an anvil soon (since getting cars moving isn't that impressive).

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I would have to say the best robot in CircuitRunners' history is Captain Carabineer (CC). While the 2004 game "FIRST Frenzy" was just before my time, it was our only robot to win a regional event.

It's tough me to say that CC is our best robot for it won for it's extreme simplicity by hanging on the bar. Now, I'm all about the winning, not so much the simplicity. But I can't deny that it played the game well.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I think our 2003 robot was our best robot ever. It was by far the simplest machine we ever built but it gave us time to have driver practice and to get autonomous mode working correctly. It also was the only robot that got us a regional win.

The 2005 robot is a close 2nd because it was the first year we used the DeWalt Transmissions.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I have to say that our best robot was 2001 because it was part of the Championship winners.

My favorite bots have been 2004 and 2005 but I lean towards 2004 more because that was my favorite game and I loved watching GizMOE climb and hang, that was great watching that.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

If we are going with bots while we were on the team here are my favorite bots from the teams I've been on.

710 PAW(Now 744) This one is a toss up between 2003 and 2004, In '03 we had a sweet turret arm but '04 was more successful and the gurny lift system was pretty awesome.

1083- I was only on this team for 1 year ( its last year in existence ) which was 2005. This years bot wasn't all that great it fought us all the way and we bit off a bit more than we could chew. But it was definitely a cool robot to look at one of the earlier Omni Drives ( We didn't invent it and they were around but not nearly as prevalent as they are now ) and The double jointed arm was cool.

1902- This ones interesting too but as far as the best/most successful bot ( with only 2 to choose from ) I'll have to go this year. Last year we actually had a better winning record (which I think was b/c auton was worth more) But this year we road less on other people coat tails and won a lot more of the matches on our own that we did win. Also it was much prettier, and only had one problem we had to fix all of competition, which was a bane bots issue.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

According to ancient legends our 1995 robot was the best ever. It single handedly won nationals! But no one from those mythic times of lore remains on team 100. Nothing remains of that robot. Not so much as a scrap of aluminum. There are no pictures of it either. What it did, how it worked will remain a mystery forever...

Our 2007 robot was pretty cool though :cool: :D

Re: Your Best Robot
 

i think it has to be our robot from 2000, not sure what it was but we have like 4 trophies from that year in the room, so we assume that must be the teams best robot ever

Re: Your Best Robot
 

In the history of 115, based on results, here are what I think are the best robots of MVRT:

2001: El Toro IV: runner-up at Silicon Valley Regional, won Curie Division

2003: El Toro VI: Silicon Valley Regional Champion

Re: Your Best Robot
 

350: 2000 or 2005. The 00 robot was simple and effective at hanging on the bar that year, made it to quarter-finals. The 05 robot's drive was amazing, giving us some amazing defensive ability. 2005 was 350's only regional win.

1995 is a rookie so no contest on that one.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

man this is a hard choice for me.
65 has had a lot of awesome robots.
i like the ones that i have been associated with for different reasons.

2003: obvious reasons
2004: we could easily hang in any crowd
2005: after we changed the gripper to a skewer, we were soooo quick in doing what we did, plus our auto mode was flawless for the first time ever.
2006: we were really good, when the cam worked.

then there is the robots that i have seen
2002:we were awesome that year, very very good, IMO one of the best
2007:extremly good, but had some different problems with stradegy and other things. but none the less, an exelant design.

then there is the 1997 bot, which made it all the way to the championship matches, against the only 2 teams that could realy beat them, 47 and 71.

i will come back with my desicion later, but the draft is starting now so i must go.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

1519's best robot was 2006. We won our regional, and placed 9th in Newton. This game was my personal favorite. (winning helped:D )
This years robot had the potential to do well, but it wasn't working.:(

Re: Your Best Robot
 

My favorite MARS robot in the team's 3 year history is our 2006 "Aim High" competitor "Ball-istic". The design is deceptively simple, incredibly robust and a crowd pleaser. Its versatile abilities have allowed the team to pursue a multitude of community outreach activities:

We've used it to catapult ballons with preschoolers, throw "snowballs" (white poofballs) in Jupiter's Holiday parade, provide the public a chance to shot balls at targets at Fun Fairs, teach scouts about catapults (a Weblos Engineering requirement), played countless rounds of dodgeball... and it's just plain fun to watch! :)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I've been in this competition for four years--three with 1293, and now one with 1618. Each year, there's always been some critical design flaw that's kept my team back. Window motor drive, hard-to-control casters, a shooter that just couldn't shoot, it wasn't working out one way or the other.

This season, Uppercut had its flaws--but we made all the right design choices. Of the twelve matches we played at Palmetto (10 qualifying, 2 elimination), we tipped twice (it happens), lost power once (and I can't even blame this one on the Rockwell block, the way our tower was shaking around), and lost five of the sprocket screws on our center wheel, causing us to be out for a match and a half.

Now, you may call not being able to finish five of twelve matches a high rate of success, but the problems we had were largely because of a lack of a good pre-match checklist. When we lost wheel screws, it became one of the kids' job to check every single nut on the wheels (all 36, critical ones swapped with locknuts) before each match. When the tower bucked around, causing the wire to the battery to pull out of the Rockwell block (YouTube)...well, it would've become a checklist item. (We got knocked out by the 1251/1626/1758 alliance after that match.)

Still, we had one of the fastest things on six wheels at Palmetto, and it didn't just drive its way into the Palmetto quarterfinals--it did it as an alliance captain, something no active team in the area has ever done before. Put it all together, and Uppercut is definitely the best robot I've had a hand in (and it's fast growing on me as the favorite, too).

Oh, and the arm almost works now. What'll we do with it? Well, it'll hopefully involve going north or south by a few states. ;)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well, we've had three really good robots... 2002, 2006, and 2007. 2002 was really simple, just two arms that grabbed the goals and then it lifted itself off the ground so it couldn't be pushed around, and that landed us our first regional runner up, and our first time into the eliminations at Championships.

2006 was also a good robot, although it didn't have anything to show for it. We could play mean defense and load balls into the high goal like nothing. However other teams could also easily play defense on us, with a stationary shooter and no camera to speak of. We also got jammed somewhat easily, which we had a fix for but never got around to using.

2007 I think was our best robot in our history, but random problems throughout the year didn't allow for us to really show that with awards or anything. We were third seeded in Los Angeles, where we did really good. Later on we found out techniques in driving that would make us even better, and had this regional been later on we may have been able to do a little better. Although beachbots (330) did take this regional, so it would have been a major challenge if we did make it that far. ;P
In Philadelphia we did amazing, and would have done even better had it not been for banebots problems. Our drivers had a lot of experience now and we were getting really good. The banebots transmissions failed in the second match of the semi finals, and luckily with the backup robot they were able to win the third match giving us a semifinalist. Our second in our 8 years of existence. However in this regional we did take a major hit which would prove to be a problem in atlanta.
In Atlanta, problem after problem occured. First we obviously had to change the banebots from the failure in Philly, so that made us miss our first practice match. Then we decided that with a hit in our "claw" (we used a suction cup, it had a lot more success than you'd expect though, and I think that deterred some teams, [suction cup? ew that'll never work]- the first thought I had when we started using it. I was proven wrong, but I'm sure other people though that when they first looked at it) we should change it. However changing it turned out to be more problematic, because now the chain it ran on decided to pop off every once and a while towards the end of the match. This really hurt us for picking, making us look unreliable. Then we fixed it, right before our last qualifying round. However we forgot to plug in one of the pneumatic tubings... causing a leak, causing suction not to work. Well that sucked. We played mean defense in a lot of rounds, but problems with our bot and a seeming unreliability would have made me not pick us for eliminations either. Ah well.

Besides robot, 2007 also turned out to be our most successful overall also, with our first blue banner in 8 years, a regional chairmans award. =)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Why? So you can witness Millen breaking your hearts again (oh, look another reciever taken in the first round :rolleyes: )?

Re: Your Best Robot
 

1999 Maverick: double omni wheels on one end (before they were invented?), Giant cog wheels on the other end for climbing the puck. Articulated arm with powerful yaw capable of stealing playing pieces from other robots and righting our robot if flipped. Lost only one round at National Championships winning with 1 and 48.

2001 Scorpion: Balanced the ramp by reaching over the side and then letting the software fine tune. Our driver figured out the trick, it was not the original plan, the software was supposed to do all the work. Still running, really fun at demos.

2002 Ace: Tiny bot that beat the beast in quarter finals at Disney. Amazing high speed auto locating program got this bot to the goals first every time.

2004 Mayday: Nothing outstanding, but this bot did well on the field. Winner at BAE. Played 3 3 round eliminations in a row on the Newton Field before being stopped by the Buckeye champs of that year.

2006 Pokerface: a bit of an overachiever like Mayday, can still shoot ten poof balls in less than 6 seconds. Finalist at BAE, Winner at UTC New England and #1 seeded finalist on Newton.

2007 Ace of Spades: My current favorite. Arm is a bit reminiscent of Maverick with the addition of an elevator. Our only other robot with omni wheels. Fast and maneuverable, does best in an all offensive game, (check out the Toronto elimination matches on Blue Alliance). #1 seed and finalist at UTC Connecticut, Winner in Toronto.

The robots that won banners (1999, 2004, 2006, 2007) had few or no breakdowns at Championships and drivers that were able to improvise solutions to game challenges on the fly.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I am gonna have to say this year for the following reasons:
We entered into the qualifying matches of every regional we attended
We were always either a first round pick or a team captain
We went undefeated in the Prelims of Las Vegas(Going up against such teams as 233 and 254) and through Galileo
We recieved our first ever regional Win at Vegas
We were the first seed coming out of the Prelims in Galileo (then promptly losing our first two matches...)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

This is a pretty difficult decision... seems to me we've had pretty unique and strong robots in the past (and hopefully the future).

Our 2003 robot had an amazing form to fit the function.
Our 2004 robot placed second at the championship event.
Our 2005 robot won IRI.
This year's robot had an amazing form to fit the function.

I'm going to say this year's robot... simply because of my role in creating it ;) .

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For Cyber Blue, I would have to name 2 -

2001 - the robot won the Innovation in Control award for the integration of the operator (a backpack and mechanical arm) with the robot (the robot arm followed the human / mechanical arm). The robot performed its intended function well. Seeing this robot and the team at Epcot got me involved with FIRST.

2007 - the robot won two regionals and two design awards and was consistent and reliable. (but most importantly, it was complete and working when it went into the shipping crate!)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

It is amazing how much better the robot is if the drivers and programmers can spend some time with it!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I have 3 "best" robots I can think of for us, all for different reasons:

2004: Most successful. This is our only robot to make it to the Finals at any competition, we seeded #5 or #6, and we even received an award from team 60 for our game strategy. It was simple and really never broke, what amazes me is we did that well with so much to improve on it still (programming very lacking that year, as I did 50+% of it as a freshman).

2005: Best performer. We finished 4th overall, being picked by the #1 seed and averaging more than 5 tetras per match (highest at AZ Regional). We only made it to the semis that year (largely due to strategy), but it was easily the most threatening robot we've had. Our partners 980 had the 2nd highest tetra average at AZ and finished #1 in their division at the Champs, which makes me wonder if we could have finally broken our curse of bad Championship showings had we gone that year.

2007: Best personally. Our robot was in the middle as far as how good our robots have been over the years, but our programming team attempted more than ever before. The autonomous and sensor usage I helped with was far and beyond anything we've ever attempted, and had we actually had time to test things and get them working our season could have been a very different story.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

hey hey hey
he was the best player in the draft.
haha

i think my most favorite robot of 65s has to be our 2005 robot. that robot was awesome. i put alot of work designing the back wheelie bar and me and one teamate val spent a lot of time working on that new skewer. i think that it has to be my favorite. now im not saying that i dont love oue national championship winning robot, im just saying that it worked for that game. haha

Re: Your Best Robot
 

PJ beat me to it. It's hard to say anything bad about those robots because those are the two most 177 alum would say are tops. We look at them every year to see what we've done right in the past.

98 was a #1 Qualifier at Nationals that year and many teams this year used a variation on our roller claw from that year to pick up tubes.

2001 Was such a simple and elegant design and it still runs fine. It was also the debut of the 2nd gen Bobcat extendo arm when we switched from monocoque sheetmetal to extruded box.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

well i think that this year was probly one of the best years in first.
we picked for the first time at nationals.and
i beleive that if our arm dident break we could have went all the way.
but thats just my thoughts :)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Minus the problems we had with it during qualifiers that year, I have to say my favorite comes from my grade nine year, our 04 bot [besides it was dang pretty, water cut and powder coated]. So in terms of prettiness (we could use the water cutter again but that was the only year we have had a good enough student drafter willing to draft an entire robot) that takes the cake. Our teams best years for how far we got though would be 02 and 03. 02 we won the first ever Canadian Regional, and 03 we placed very well at Champs (forget final result but it was good). This year was also great for us dispite technical problems in Waterloo [mechanical problems with boom and lift, and it was us that went up in smoke one match :ahh: ], and in GTR we suffered the effects of the "random selections", with 4 of 8 matches playing shorthanded, and only 2 of 8 games had a team in the top 2/3 of ranking aligned with us [however we still managed to be part of the 4th highest score at GTR, with our team pulling in 5 of the 8 tubes scored] in the end we placed 55th of 63 teams, but were happy knowing our robot wasn't the problem (in GTR at least) ... plus every year we miss at least a week of build due to the bad winter weather our area gets (this year it was 13 days missed), so with this being the year we have missed the most and seeing how well our robot performed we are happy in that aspect too.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'd have to say our best robot was in 2003's stack attack. The robot was very effective at running into boxes and knocking them down. It was always amazing when the autonomous worked perfectly and it drove up that ramp, arms extended, sending all the boxes cascading down onto the other side. beautiful.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

This is an easy one for me.

My favorite robot on team 95 was from 2002. We called her Feynman, but everyone just called it the popcorn popper or grasshopper. I am terribly proud of her. I really threw my self into the build and was rewarded with a driver position. I feel spoiled now. Feynman was easy and flashy to drive and altogether too fast. It was like driving a remote control sports car.

I still remember the noise the crowd made the during our first run down a line of balls. I had a huge grin for the rest of the day. She did one thing and did it very very well. It wasn't the teams most successful robot but certainly the most fun and most recognized.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I remember that robot. Very fun to watch :)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

This robot set the standard in FRC with regard to picking up balls. It could pick up a row of 20 soccer balls in about 4 seconds. That is no small feat.

We based our pickup system on our 2004 robot purely on team 95's design. I am sure this effort from team 95 inspired more than just our team.

Thanks, team 95.

Andy Baker

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I remember seeing video of this during at WRRF workshop before my first season on a team. I've been looking for that video ever since. If anyone knows where I can find said video, please PM me. That robot was awesome

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I have that video on my laptop. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

That was probably from one of my presentations. I've got the videos on this computer, too. I'll try to find it and put it up somewhere if Cory doesn't beat me to it.

<edit>
Here's a link to one video of that robot...

http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p...&current=1.flv

If you remember any other videos from my presentations that you haven't been able to find shoot me a PM and I can send them to you or send you a copy of the presentation itself. I'm like a packrat, and keep everything I do related to FIRST, even though I'm not involved anymore.
</edit>

My favorite robot to work on was my 2003 robot. It was a 6-motor swerve drive (the first non-coaxially driven swerve on the west coast) using Drill and CIM motors to drive the wheels and the two Globe motors to rotate the modules in sets of 2. It was designed by a 19 year old non-engineering student, a 19 year old philosophy major, a 19 year old civil engineering major, and a 17 year old high school student. There are lots of pictures floating around of it, but if you're unable to find any let me know and I'll find them for you.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

My favorite robot that I was around for was definitely Black Widow, or 2005 Triple Play robot.

http://www.cooneyrobotics.com/photos/2004/last.jpg

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Thanks P.J. I would have to say that I have a couple favorites.

97' If the controller didn’t break we might have been able to edge out Beatty in the semi's that year. (We did beat them to the top with a tube that year. I wish we had video of that round) We also had top score that year with I think it was 228 points in a seeding round.

98' I'll never forget the human player that threw a ball at our claw so hard I thought we were finished. Instead the robot just shook and kept going. We lost to the Chief in NH in the semi's going a couple tie breakers back. We also seeded first in epcot and won two quality awards.

01' Tommy and Eric made that machine work so smoothly.

06' Our defensive power house. Greg and Andrew/ Chris had that machine working better than any of us would have imagined.

07' The "Ring Wrangler II" our 97 robot was the Ring Wrangler I. This machine needed small adjustments and the help of two perfect robots to give us our first championship win. Thanks to Steve and Hunter of course...

Re: Your Best Robot
 

This is a tough one for me. Our best robot and our most effective robot are two different animals. Our best robot was our 2004 robot. It was a great defensive robot, and easily our best driven and strongest robot. This robot has been the base of design for all but one robot that came after it. That was our most effective robot, our 2006 robot. That robot was the only robot we ever built that was a true offensive juggernaut. I would say we were in the top 15 in scoring that year. We were able to outscore all but a handful of teams. Either us or 70 made it to the finals in every event we attended. In my opinion that robot will be the one that our team will always remember because that season was one that will go down as one of our best.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

What's most interesting looking at each team's list of sucessful seasons is which robot was technically the best, and which year you had the most sucess. Although we have yet to actually pull out 95-02 to show students (like me), I would probably call 2007 our most well-designed robot yet, considering the amount of design that went into it, number of times we had to fix it (one burnt CIM, some burnt FP's and BB's, and a gearbox replacement in all, right?), and the amount of student involvement in CADD and machining it.

However, despite a national championship win, one can easily argue that 2006 was a more successful season, with a finalist award at WWZ, two regional wins, a divisional win, a close semi-final loss on Einstein, and victory at Battlecry. All of that is compared to two semi-finalist finishes and the championship. However, the 2006 robot was constantly broken, with an imperfect shooter and IFI wheels that seemed to fail every third match. So, which one was more successful? Are we focusing on the features, reliability, and construction of a robot, or the number of awards it won?

The question I would ask is to the aforementioned teams in the original post, teams like 71, 111, 233, 254, 469, 1114 (just the ones that came to mind first), and which robots were their "best" if you ignore what awards they won. Which robots were the most inspirational, revolutionary, or which robot's actually caused rule changes in future year. A lot of teams have mentioned their robots in terms of awards, but what robots really inspired you for the future and changed the way you thought about design the next time balls, torroids, or tetras (eh?) came up again in a game?

Re: Your Best Robot
 

*sigh* That video was always a disappointment to me. The potentiometer on our control board used to ramp up the roller speed had failed and as a result we missed the last few balls as the rollers bogged down and stalled. It is, so far as I know, the most widely distributed clip of us running a line, and we didn't even get them all!

Oh well. Better then the first few clips of us running a line. Until we learned to properly ramp up the roller speed, balls would just shoot straight up 15 feet and out of the hopper. It was impressive, but useless. My co-driver and I had plotted to do it intentionally during our first practice match with out telling anyone, but decided against it at the last second. The scoring table was right next to the field and we didn't want to bombard them on our first day out.

-Andy A.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I would say that the best robot out of the G.R.R. plant is the 2004 robot. "Roxanne" was a great design that accomplished the game task with proficiency. It went undefeated at the Buckeye Regional that year, and made it on the Einstein Field at The Championship Event. There is a picture of her attached. You can see a great video of her in a match here.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Well, I go back as far as the team does, and, I do remember most of them.

Chuck's best was probably PI, the 1999 'bot, which wound up a Championship Finalist. It's followed closely, in my opinion by the 2007 version and the 2002 version. Chuck XI (2007) won the Philly Regional, as a defensive bot and has an awsome drive train that can go anywhere we want it to go. We didn't score many points, but we sure kept our opponents from scoring. Chuck and 'Moose' of 2002 also were great robots and won us an engineering award in NJ that year. Yes, I did say 2 robots. Moose was independently controlled so he could return to our home zone while still connected to Chuck.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For Team 1636, the 2007 robot is by far the best. It's based off of the 2005 bot and basically the same thing except for the gripper but since we knew what exactly to build, we improved all the components with a better jack and etc. Our robot never broke down except once and that's because a pwm cable came loose and made our arm useless. I wish though, that our team actually went with a better drive train, I told my team over and over that I wanted traction wheels and omni wheels but no, then they agreed with me at Championships.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I don't think I can say that I have a specific robot of ours I like best of all. Rather, theres specific components that I thought were really nifty out of three of ours.

2005: Our 2005 robot had a nice mecanum drive with a 'powerslide' function, which our driver (who sadly graduated last year :( ) used to his advantage to slide around curves and play games with inertia... enough to get him a 'drive it like you stole it' award from another team at the boilermaker that year.

2006: Our 2006 robot had a really sweet shooter and an autoshoot so stable our operator never touched the manual button, plus it shot up to two balls per second and hit about 80% of the time, even when being pushed around. Unfortunately, our plastic drive sporckets for the brecoflex track were a little too thin walled, and broke every so often. :o

2007: Our 2007 robot had a great elevator, capable from going from floor to 3rd row scoreing in just 1 second. The elevator had a total of 1.5hp behind it, a nice delrin and ball bearing slide system with a triple extension timing belt drive. The gripper also had the capability of rotating the tube within it.

any comments?

-q

-q

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Our 2006 robots.. We put a lot into it and got a lot out of it. It was also fun to drive.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I've seen pics of the '05, vid of the '06 and watched on webcast the '07 in action... all look like very interesting projects.

Of the three, which your personal fav either cause you got to work most on it or just plain felt it was your baby more.
And what's become of them ?

Re: Your Best Robot
 

i like our 05 bot its fun to drive

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I've only been lucky enough to be a part of 469 for the past two years, but I have known them well since getting into FIRST in 2003. They have always produced amazing robots.

I think that the 2006 robot is the best...
Followed closely by this years robot (2007)
Followed closely by the 2002 robot
Then the 2003 robot
Then the 2005 robot
Then the 2004 robot...

Those are the only ones I'm familiar with...

I honestly couldn't be luckier to be working with this team. I have learned so much. Hopefully I've been able to give a little back...

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'm pleased to say they are all still very much alive, all the way back to our 2003 stack attack robot... which still is one of the strongest (,slowest, and heaviest! :ahh: ) drivetrains I have yet seen. And again, I truly cannot pick a favorite... theres just parts I like on certain ones.

-q

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Team 1985 is a rookie team, so this year's robot is our only robot.

However, I have to say we're off to a good start. We won the All-star rookie award at the St. Louis regional and the Delphi driving tomorrow's technology award at the Boilermaker regional.

The ramps on our robot were cool too, and the twin clashes of metal that they made when deployed got the crowd excited every time.

Sadly, the gremlins were out in full force at nationals and we suffered a series of mishaps, technical failures, and obscure rules, before placing second to last in our division.:( We really should have done better than that, but that's life eh?

Next year we'll be doing much better all around.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

For me personally, it's a tie between Beach Bot 2005 and Beach Bot 2007.

At first glance, they look like almost the same robot. Same wheel types, but '07 has AM Gen2 pneumatic gearboxes and '05 has KOP trannies from that year. Slightly different arm gearing, IIRC. Different gripper and "side devices"--wedges for '05 and ramps for '07. Also, '05 has more shielding than '07 (2005 was covered by Lexan; 2007 had a small piece on the front and used its ramps as shields). Other than that, they're the same overall design.

Second place goes to our 2004 robot. All it did was hang on a 10' bar and slide around on it, but it usually won the match. (50 points per robot up, and we could almost guarantee 50 for us and zero for our opponents if we got up. Most of the times that didn't happen, we blocked one robot while another came up. Either that, or we went over before getting onto the bar.)

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I have been on the team for two years now and I have been to a total of 6 events and not including off season events. I would have to say this years robot is pretty much amazing. We had an awesome drive that was designed and prototyped by one of our seniors. Last year, we had a descent drive but this year we got all the kinks worked out and we did great. We won two regionals with this drive but there are other factors that help us win those regionals and awards including our whole teams' effort during the season, our mentors' dedication, great alliances, and others. Again, I would have to say this year robot is pretty kick butt. :D


Enjoying the time spent with my team!

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I liked a robot that was made before I was even on the team.

2005: "Rhinobot" We had a great success that year. It was fast and efficient.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

I'm going to have to agree with the squirrel. This year (2007) was by far our best year, and not just from the awards perspective (we got more awards this year than all previous years combined.) Our robot was built without too much of a rush, worked reliably for all of our regionals, and was very simplistic. This can all be supported by the evidence that this is the first year were we did not take all, or even half of Thursday to modify or change our robot drastically. It was a great year, and I'm going to miss all the graduating seniors that are leaving and hope we can function even half as well without them.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Entirely true. Your robot was amazing.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

From the years I have been involved it would be KG-3 in 2006 not just because of it's performance at the competition but it's performance at the off season events.
But for all years combined for a robot that won the competition it would be our 2000 and 2001 robot named ?1 and ?2 (we hardly have any information on those 2 robots which is why lost history is still being researched).

Re: Your Best Robot
 

You may love me for this.... I was just looking at some battlebots stuff and was looking at biohazard's site. When I clicked on the "team biohazard" link a page with interesting info about your team winning the '95 champs was there. Even some pictures.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

well, our rookie bot didn't score a single point and wasn't even that great at defence we finished 43/45. but this year we had a tube scoring bot and won our regional.

Re: Your Best Robot
 

Fluffy, our 2002 'bot. She took us all the way to the Championship Finals.
Eric