Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

Ok, so me and another team member thought it'd be nice if we could put a ramp on the bot for some strange reason. He also goes, "Why not put a flame thrower on it?" I said sure, why not add a chainsaw to the back of it! He also puts a Tommy gun on the thing, but I said no, M16, then he says mini chaingun, I said .50 CAL!!!! "YEAHHH!!!!" Uhm, we also figured a giant battle axe would be fitting too. I think we were in BattleBots mode.

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

One member (before reading the rules) wanted to attach a pinpoint to a stick... in endgame, you could just pop your balls ontop of the overpass; practically impossible to remove!
Now you're thinking with portals!

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

Maybe if we build a giant wooden badger.

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

I think the best robot is The Magic School Bus. Anyone know a mentor with the last name 'Frizzle'?

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

so far this year, the weirdest design we have come up with was using play-doh to stick to the trackball in order to hold it. Our best, though was lastyear when we found in the rules that there was no verticla height limit to the bots, so we were going to attach a hook and winch to the rafters of the arena, and we were going to lift ALL THREE robots on our alliance!:yikes:

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

so far this year, the weirdest design we have come up with was using play-doh to stick to the trackball in order to hold it. Our best, though was last year when we found in the rules that there was no vertical height limit to the bots, so we were going to attach a hook and winch to the rafters of the arena, and we were going to lift ALL THREE robots on our alliance!:yikes:

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

Some suggestions from students at Saturday's brainstorming meeting:

- a helicopter
- build the robot inside a deflated trackball: robot would contain pressurized air tanks that would inflate the ball from inside during hybrid mode, then roll itself like a hamster ball, hoping the refs would mistake it for a real trackball
- push the ball around the track with air pressure waves coming from a large subwoffer playing Metallica
- vertical air column floats the ball about 7' above ground as it drives around the track
- a giant Pac-man that would "swallow" the trackball
- a helicopter (the rookie student just didn't want to give up his idea, even as of yesterday!)
- putting our smallest student inside a trackball, then replacing the ball for one of the field when no one was looking

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

someone on our team thought of a robot that would tip over so it would 5 feet long and it would just be a catapult.

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

Okay for this year, the wackiest idea involves gigantic chopsticks and a rice bowl. The chopsticks are on the front of the bot and pick up the trackball; they then deliver the trackball to the rice bowl on top of the bot. The rice bowl then catapults the trackball.

And also, if we're on the red alliance, the red trackball would be like a giant boiled shrimp ball in the bowl.

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

wow, some of these are just out there, but i guess thats the point of the thread.

one serious design brought up last year resembled some 2WD vehicle out of Star Wars. it had two, huge bicycle wheels with an arm in the middle. think about 2wd wedge-bots you would see in battlebots, except with bicycle wheels and an arm.

the worst design i've come up with, i literally dreamed up. last saturday night, i dreamed a basic box bot with a chair mounted on top. i believe it was a denso motor that we used to swivel the chair. a clown was then duck-taped to the top. after a funny scene in the dream where we had to get the robot to pass inspection, we drove the robot in a match. unfortunately, we were disabled for high speed ramming before the clown could score.

and no, i didn't bring this up in the meeting. probably should've. :rolleyes:

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

We sugested that equping our robot with a deflector dish may protect it from falling Track Balls, but we were doubtful of its ability to stand up to the force.
Maybe we can beam up the track ball over the overpass.

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

One of our crazy designs while brainstorming was a large fan to blow the ball over the overpass. Then a large tube to catch the ball on the other side. I think our 120lb limit would have been met.:ahh:

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

Last night we were throwing ideas around... (at 11:30 on a school night...) and someone mentioned a "jousting javelin"

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

well this isn't a robot design but we were joking about controlling the robot with a DDR pad or Guitar Hero Controller :D

Re: Silly and ridiculous robot designs.
 

We've talked about controling it with a power glove. I was thinking about how one would control a 4-jointed arm (like the one in the kickoff animation), and my favorite idea was to use a "voodoo doll" of the arm, with one of the drivers furiously minipulating it while trying to score handle game pieces.