Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

oh oh oh I got a great one!!!

screw in the tether cable

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Let Arefin near it! :p
ahahaha I kid I kid,
Best way to break a robot....is to ummm... leave off limit switches which stop arms from moving during autonomous operations? Perhaps...
But really, the best way to break a robot, is to build one. Because the existence of a robot is a prelude to its destruction.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Leave a flashlight on the robot. This happened to us in the quarterfinals at Trenton. Our robot crossed two lines in hybrid and then stopped. When our drivers tried to take control, one wheel wasn't working. Turned out the flashlight was actually IN the drive belts, turned on, illuminating the robot. I had the drivers e-stop the robot, but you should've seen the look on the ref's face when he pulled it out.

*Make your robot look like a trackball. Wait for another robot to hurdle it.
*Hook a claw around one of the plates on the rack from last year. Pull as hard as you can (hint: the steel chain will NOT break)
*Attempt to drive down stairs.
*Pull out the programming cable while downloading. Assure your head programmer that you saw the program state light turn green (happened to us at Chesapeake)
*Have a critical part of your robot exposed (happened in semifinals at Chesapeake. Our forklift was toast).
*ENTER FIRST ROBOTICS!

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Would it be considered anti-FIRST to continute a thread about how we can wreak our own robots?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

This tread was not created to describe ways that we destroy our robot, this tread was created to laugh at the things that have lost us important matches, or screw ups that we laugh at and wish to share. I started this tread with actions nonrealating to robotics that would through the intercession of some unknown force make your robot screw up, but people started to use this tread to desribe disasterious and hilarious stories of build season, and competion.
First was created as a program that was to inspire math and science, and by seening our failures is how we learn.
"Experience is a thing that is learned right after it is need." Unkown

And these stories are how we learned in disaterious, but hilarious ways, i see no anti-FIRST reason with that. If you do please post why

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Ergh, happened to us 30 minutes before shipping. We where finally loading the final drivers code for our first full test and someone turned off the robot while the code was still loading, and no one could remember how to hard-reset the RC.

Ramming the most delicate part of the robot into the lane divider in a completely unnecessary defensive move (we where trying to prevent a set with about 3 seconds left to go, half a field away from the overpass).

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

I can think of many surefire ways to break a robot.

Drive it behind a Boeing 747 that is taking off.
Shoot it.
Blow it up.
Push it out of an aircraft without a parachute.
Put it in front of a semi.
Throw it off a building.
Fire it from a trebuchet.
Fire it from a canon.
Fire it from a canon that is being thrown by a trebuchet.
Put it near a very large tesla coil.
The dog ate my robot.
Set fire to it, can't get much more surefire then that.
Use too many puns.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

I left the robot for one minute with our programming mentor while I went and looked at something else, and he managed to hit the overpass at full speed with our forklift. Luckily, it didn't break it. The robot instead drove until it tipped partly on its back side and the wheels were no longer in contact with the floor. We have a good CoG.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

330 had an incident where a programming mentor was the only one in the shop and broke the robot. It was minor--an output gear on a redundant motor--but still...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

By far the most surefire way is to declare that "We've finally finished the build early!" At that point, it is almost guaranteed that the robot will suffer a total existence failure, or worse, during your most important match.

Of course, and more seriously, a lack of testing is almost a more-guaranteed killer (why is it that everything that gets tested already works and everything that doesn't get tested doesn't work?). I think this is what let my team down this year...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

let some little kids drive it during a demonstration to your sponsor in a room full of huge pillars and take your hand off the disable switch for just a second

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

let a freshmen anywhere near the robot at anytime (unless enclosed in a lexan box)

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

letting hybrid run without the autonomous switch in your hand. (we have many shards of fiberglass on our field for this reason)

programming with the autonomous switch enabled (owie)

overconfidence

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Whenever I get my hands on the robot, I end up running it into a wall (oops, I wrote the hybrid code wrong:ahh:).

On the bright side, the mechanical people always end up adding extra reinforcement to the parts I bend/break.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Not having an actual disable switch, so you make one, wire it backwards because the diagram confused someone, and fry the OI. Then you're done for a while.

poor programmers/electrical people. they get such a small amount of time to do so much! and this is real sympathy.