Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

Thanks for all your tips and discussion! We work closely with 236, and they hav built practice bots for atleast the last few years. Look slike its goin down. Please continue the conversation, It will help young teams like us!

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

When my first team (1018 go ROBODEVILS!!!) started, we had a hard time doing anything more than building one robot. When we finally made the decision to build a second version it was a great advantage for the drivers.
Once you make the decision to do it, you can invest and use that controller for the next year's 2nd bot.

I would strongly suggest that anyone thinks about it seriously. It is a great test bed in the off season and can be loaned out.

This year on 1983 we are building two drive bases...and we are inviting any other Seattle/Washington teams over to practice driving the one that stays home. It may only be a drive base but from my experience, just driving around on a large field can help immensely.

The experience of standing up and driving up on a regulation size field is quite important.

Acquiring the FIRST objects is very difficult at distance. Getting that perspective on a full size field can be extremely helpful. Just standing and driving back and forth or up and down is also helpful.

We invite anyone over to our place to try out their robot or use one of ours just to drive around... get the feel fo a field... become friends!!!

We hope to see you here!!!

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

We'll be there. :) We already have the drive train; we're hoping to duplicate whatever we build for competition on that so we can get as much practice in as possible.

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

This year, 228 is planning on building a clone of our real robot to be a practice robot. Last year we came close to having one, except time and money reasons kept it from being completed.

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

Team 166 tried building identical robots last year. While it didn't work out exactly as we had planned, it still provided us with a good chance to make the second (competition) robot, get a little bit of driving practice, and a lot of spares.

Hubs were welded onto a shaft in the elbow, so if the shaft broke that's it. Of course, while practicing before River Rage, the shaft broke. Fortunately we took the effort 6 months before to build an identical robot and had an entire new arm to put in place of the broken one.

It would be better to make identical robots with identical materials, not one out of plywood and one out of aluminum. This is for spare part purposes and so driving the robots feel the same.

Also, make sure your budget can accomodate both robots. We decided to use AM mecanum wheels with a healthy amount of Banebots transmissions with encoders mounted on them. We pretty much ran out of money.

There are a lot of risks to take like having enough money, time alotted, etc. but if you do it right, you can end up with a machine that the drivers can use to practice and the programmers can use for autonomous. In a game like last year's where driver skill is incredibly important, this concept can be huge.

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

Our team makes two bots. The 3week bot (you may have already seen videos) and the final bot. We keep weight and stuff in mind but don't focus on it 100%. On the final bot we mod the designs from the practice bot to make it functional and effective and than after ship we make those mods to our 3week robot. It works well and many other teams (I'm pretty sure almost every team that makes it to einstein) have a practice robot.

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

What do you do with the practice bot after ship??

Re: TEAM 1699 BUILD CONCEPT!
 

Is this a trick question? You practice with it. You give your drivers a chance to get really good before the first competition. You can use the fix-it windows to tweak your software and get it working exactly as you want on real hardware. You prototype upgrade parts that you can then fabricate either during a fix-it window or at competition.

A clonebot that stays at home after you ship the competition 'bot can be a powerful advantage if used well.