surefire ways to break you robot
 

These are 5 ways that your robot will break during a compition. These action can only be done by a member of the pit crew who has extensive knowlegde of every system, and how to fix everyone.


Put all the tools, parts, and electric tape away.

Walk to the snack bar and spend more then $5, you will be intercepted on your way back to pits by 2 or more team members looking for you. After fix is done, your food will be missing.

Fall asleep.

Connect to a wireless network, not to do research for robotics but to have fun.

Try to watch more then 4 matches in row.


Got anymore, this always broke the robot for me :)

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Mention how great the robot is running

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Just say this:

"Hey, the code's done! Let's test it!"

[My apologies to all you software wizards that are given almost all of Thursday afternoon to get hybrid-mode "done".];)

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

Presence of parents, school administrators, or prospective sponsors.
Videotape a match.
Look across the field to see 1024, 111, and 1114 on the other alliance. Your robot may not break, but your drivers will.

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

Haha.
What if the people that were facing them were
217, 469, 148?


Set ur autonomous mode to try to hurdle itself over the bar?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Clothesline the overpass at high speed.

Make metal shavings over the electronics and forgetting to clean them out.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Sprinkle cheddar cheese liberally over your controller board, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. :yikes:

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Best surefire ways to break our '08 bot:

Try to actually engineer pieces of the bot like motors to handle a pre-conceived load without burning out

Claim we actually have an idea of what we're doing

Claim that even though it's the first time we've ever done most of the things we're doing on the bot, they will all work together ok

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

advance to the semi-finals

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

Step 1: Retrieve our various PVC pipes strewn about the field on Thursday at Chesapeake.

Step 2: Instruct a student to take the drill and screw together the fittings and pipes.

Step 3: Queue up for our next practice round.

(With the relative youth of our team, the kids missed a spot or three each go-round until that night, where there were about five screws in every joint.)

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

With 5 seconds left, pull off something that takes 9 seconds to do.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

tell the drivers " hey lets try something different this round"

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

why not just touch your ground battery lead to your hot battery lead? that always makes sparks. Sparks=break

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

well for all of 1902s bots all you have to do is let scott or chuck(two of our old drivers) drive it and...well this happens.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...xploding+wheel

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

bottom out your suspension going full speed down the track and run into one of the "feet" supporting the lane divider.

I successfully did this and completely destroyed one of our suspension assemblies.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Let a NOOB drive it

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Release the magic smoke that makes all FIRST robots run. This is usually followed by people quickly turning their heads in the direction of the person saying "who let out their magic smoke" and people yelling "turn the robot off!"

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Silly magic smoke!

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Silly magic smoke, CIM's are for the Kit of parts.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

That was almost as bad as my recipe for "RC nachos".

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Giving a programmer full possession of the robot for a couple of hours.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Yep, that works.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

over use some rope that winches down your spring... watch it break and the spring fly up into the arm, causing the U-bolt to bend a terrific angle.:yikes:

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

1. Remove "unessential parts" to make weight
2. Make a small adjustment to an actuator
3. Install electric panel THEN file off sharp edges
4. Use "wobble drill" method to make parts fit
5. Bring pizza in the middle of an important assembly ("hmm never did get back to that did we?")
6. Load the robot in the crate
7. Unload the robot from the crate
8. Check wire tightness while in queue
9. Have "new engineering mentor" show up during last week of build ("I'm a garage engineer")
10. Have one of your BIG students star torque a 1/4" bolt*

*Star torque: A last resort torque spec that requires the fastener to be torqued until one sees stars. It works better for larger bolts.

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

Ha this happened to us. The head of the school board showed up and we explained how great we'd been doing, everything was going bettered then planned and yea.

So the first match he watches... the pwm for our left wheel is unplugged so first we sent us and one of our alliance members across the plane. Then we spent the rest of the match trying to defend by spinning in circles in the 4th quadrant

We won the match because of our amazing alliance partners 171 and 166 but it still was a bit embarassing

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

some more


have everything work for more then 5 matches


sit and watch the competion for more then 5 matchs, giving the chief engineer job to somebody else, this will result just as the robot is going onto the field, the new engineer will walk up to you, "We had a problem with the arm, so we took it off and replaced a broken slide, but after we mounted the new one we couldn't fit all the screws in." Then shows you a fist full of about 8 or 9 bolts.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

forget to put a "Stop" command in your autonomous routine

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Step 1) Wear a green shirt with a demonic chicken on it.

Step 2) Attend a regional on Friday.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Let a teacher / mentor / administrator / parent / programmer / web site designer / someone's little brother / sleep deprived student / me / <insert your choice here> drive the bot "just for a minute" 30 minutes before the FedEx truck is coming...

"Post, what post?"

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Hit it with a sledgehammer?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Hmmm...

To test if your power cord in in correctly, tug on it, not being able to get it out, then assure your team that the cord won't come out. Then, do not push it back in or zip-tie it, so basically loosen it.

It will come out during hybrid period.

=D

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

create a competition port box on your controls so that you can enable/disable for testing and practice, leave the "auto mode" switch on, and enable robot on cart with no blocks to charge pneumatics. Then, watch as your robot zooms off the cart in front of you and into a people barrier. Frantically look for someone other than yourself to blame for leaving the switch thrown even though you are the driver. :D :yikes:

Oh and do this before a quarterfinal match at FLR lol.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Any action following the phrase:

"Hey! Watch this!"

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Step 1) Let someone put washers on a vital Supershifter part that isn't supposed to have any washers.
Step 2) Drive robot for 5 weeks.
Step 3) Arrive at regional event.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Snip a random Zip-tie.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

chew on pwm cables...

have a non electrical person try to set up a new spike or victor

say "the robot doesnt need this..."

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

have a non electrical guy wire the battery, turn the robot on, and watch all the fuses blow...red-red, black-black not black-red


Let a nonprogrammer program robot, watch it get g22's during hybrid


Try to use an untested hybrid code


Edit:

And my personal ouchy

Stick a pwm prong all the way through your hand while being inspected

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Hey they left it with me for four days, and it came back with a fully functional drive train and front loader.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

This is from my 2003 season when I was still in High school, two almost crippled us, one did:

1. Electronics broad is designed in many pieces with the speed controllers in the middle of the robot. You and a friend see the pwm came out of a speed controller. You try to reach it with your hand only to find your hand completely blocks your view and you cannot twist your hand enough to push the pwm back in. You need help; your friend sticks his hands in to hold the speed controller still and help push the pwm in. However, he can't see his hands but you can and vice versa. So directing each other, each take turns pushing the pwm while the other holds it so that the pwm is not let go and pop out. After, many tries and a lot of cursing at each other, it finally goes in. then a triumphant high-five and a quick grab for some super glue to prevent this from breaking the robot for sure in a match.
2. Showing up back to pits after the last elimination match when a team mate says the CIM motor burned out. Everyone says not to worry, the team will not be picked. So the rest of the team goes grab food, you clean up the pits. About thirty minutes later, the team representative comes bursting into the pit exclaiming that team has been picked and runs off to tell the others. Then the rest of the alliance comes lead by the head mentor Grant Imahara (pre-mythbusters too:) ) comes to tell you that the robot needs to be on the field in thirty minutes. Suddenly, realizing you have a burnt out motor, you tell the bad news, to the alliance, and try to call the team mates but they won't pick up. Quickly a plan is developed to extract the motor. After about 5 minutes of panic by everyone in the pit, Grant asks if anyone actually used a voltmeter to check the problem. You realize that no one has (the voltmeter has been rarely used, if ever). 5 minutes later the problem was found to be a loose wire that needs to be reconnected. Everything now works, crises averted.
3. Collision in semifinal knocks battery out of robot.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

no, no. THAT is the surefire way to FIX the robot. :P

-Vivek

EDIT: Rookies on pit crew for 2264, I am kidding... :yikes:

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

saying the words "should" and "work" in the same sentence...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Run an untested hybrid mode without an ultrasonic obstacle detector.

Code the "disable autonomous" switch such that an open circuit defaults to autonomous ON.

Download new program with the autonomous switch on the competition dongle in the ON position.

Put down disable switch because you know that no matter what the robot does, it has to go left, which leads to an open area. Realize that a PWM cable is disconnected as the robot goes right. Discover the power of four CIM motors as the robot pushes another robot, two PCs, a desk, and two chairs five feet into the doorway.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

1. Belittle programmers (we can make driving a living hell)
2. Come to us electricians telling us that a tight wire came out of it's connector, Din, or Maxi-style fuse box.
3. Rush us, lets see you robot run if we've torn out your parts

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

1)try and show off your week 6 robot (just days before ship date) to your school at the valintines day assembly
2) while attempting 1. have the programmer control the arm (not the arm operator)
3) remind him that the claw is only ziptied on, and that under no situtation do you try and raise the arm while it is holding the ball, he can scoop up the ball, and he can rasie the arm without the ball, but CANNOT raise the arm with the ball.
4) watch him raise the arm with the ball, shaking head while hearing zipties snapping...
5) watch claw fall off in from of 1000+ students...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

I can't believe no one has mentioned this one yet.

Use an unpatched 2007 radio.

Holy cow those things were a deathtrap looking for a place to happen... Our robot attacked various objects around the shop with all the random packet loss, and the code that somehow failed to disable robot outputs when radio data was lost. Robots running at full tilt towards walls, people, tools, etc is just bad.

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.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

This one makes me laugh in retrospect.

The robot was 80 pounds overweight. Someone hands me a grinder with a cutoff wheel and says "starting trimming.....everything!"

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Use Super Glue on the gears instead of Gear Lube.

Use wood instead of aluminum.

Drill a hole into a motor.

Enter the robot in a Demolition Derby.:P

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Yeah, them prelates can be darn tough on robots. :)

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

who needs to unplug a backup batterie at the connector when you can rip the pins straight out of the robot board?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

- attempt to drive backwards under the overpass with the arm up (last 15 seconds)

- pay attention to people in the stands

- leave the autonomous switch on while testing

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

use a globe motor to manipulate the part fo the arm which lifts the trackball.
They really arent made for that much force.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Run matches with a small crack/hole in your chassis where your air compressor is? 8D Thank god we found that.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Forget to tighten down all the bolts when replacing parts on the elevator.

http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv...p?matchid=6050

Focus in at about 60 seconds left in the match, our support brace which runs from the elevator to the back of the robot snaps off and the whole elevator dips forward. Lucky for us this was an easy fix, and we got some points for herding the ball across the red finish line :rolleyes:

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

A few things that happened to us:

Driver is egged on by a mentor to spin the robot with a arm holding a trackball straight up...

During the pre-ship scrimmage, my team didn't tell me they were testing automode... which consisted of the robot running full speed down the track and then reversing... sometimes I think 127 and type 0, which is why I tell them to test it on blocks.

On Thursday afternoon, I finally get to download code to test... and the robot inexplicably wouldn't turn on.

Try to add more IR receivers 30 seconds before the match...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Upon entering FIRST you immediately apply Murphy's Laws.

Re: surefire ways to break your robot
 

Hahahaha
True!

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Let a programmer try to fix a manual problem with the solinoid.

Programmer:"I got it to work"
Me:"How"
Programmer:"This was the problem" Hands me solinoid.


so so true.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

For those old enough, this statement is usually preceded by the words "hold my beer" and then followed by a trip to the hospital.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Spend thirty minutes preparing everything for the practice field - turning on print statements, making a list of what you're going to do, writing test code for different situations...etc.

After we did this at the Chesapeake regional, we went to the practice field and started to test hybrid. The robot would go forward, stop, go forward, stop...etc. We wasted our entire practice field session figuring out that our battery was low.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Turn on power

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

allow your mentor to have a doctor pepper in the pit... ours did and he spilled it on the control board....it wouldn't have been too bad had he not immediately assumed that we had wired the robot incorrectly and spent 2 hours yelling at us to fix it and burning out our lift motor in the process

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

We dont have much in the way of mentors to start with, and they certainly dont tell us what to do. I think it is better that way.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Keep it on display for a few years and then tell a freshman to reference an old design. They end up taking it apart and not knowing how it goes back together.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Build a robot.

Try to replace your transmission 30 seconds before a semifinals match.

Hold said transmission on with zipties.

Allow your robot to watch 330 and 1717 be on an alliance together.

Forget to add the line of code that makes the lead screw stop spinning when it gets to the limit switch.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Register for the Davis Regional :D Defense is rough there :D

Brag about how your robot hasn't broke yet this season. Ours hasn't... oops :mad: do'h!

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Design the entire robot to be held together using 6/32 screws*. :rolleyes:

* 6/32 is usually the most commonly broken tap in machine shops (followed by 10/24), due to the ratio between the diameter and the number of threads per inch. I despise 6/32 with a passion and will avoid it at all costs, whether it means shrinking down to a 4/40 or increasing to an 8/32.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

We did both. This is totally true!
a) We went to Davis.
b) After the first day, we bragged about how our arm hadn't broken or been damaged. The next day, we rammed a wall and our arm got badly damaged (luckily we had all of lunch to fix it).

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Rely on COTS parts that are meant for industrial purposes.

In buckeye the steel cables(inner core) in our Brocoflex belts mysteriously fell apart after one match and the only thing holding them together was a thick layer of red linatex rubber.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Program the robot to intialize with all the pwm at 254 and all the realys on for hybrid mode.
Then put the robot in hybrid w/o unplugging the prgraming cable, or tether cable :D

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

-have a novice programmer program hybrid, he believes that 0 is neutral
-let some one with no programming experience program robot
-have a programer try to fix the robot
-have driver fix the robot
-fix robot on the field
-field the robot after using any of these words in staging or in the stands before you go on.
--should, work
--watch, this
--got it all working
--will, work
--your sponsoring us?
--you want to sponsor us?
--i double checked everything
--those pwm's arn't going any were


lastly attach anything with loktite it will have to be removed right after the loktite sets

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

try using a little baby motor to lift a lift with so much friction that your operating at roughly 10% efficiency.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Programmers....what shall we do with u?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Easy: Let us do our work so you guys can win.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Just don't do our work (building/breaking) for us, OK?

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

We try our best not to...

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

show optimism

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

1. Bring every part you can to the field just in case (ATL). Murphy's Law dictates that the one gear you don't have a replacement for is the one that will break.

2. Forget to tighten loose bolts. Realize later that part of your frame is only staying together because being hit so often (Ramp Riot, it was a pretty contact-heavy year with the King of the Hill bit) bent two pieces of the 80/20 together...and that there are no tightened bolts on that corner of the robot.

2b. Fix that. Something worse will go wrong (see 1).

3. Wire a battery backwards. (Thankfully we caught this when we were checking our batteries in the shop before we tried to use it).

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Use the old KOP BaneBots transmissions. Let's just NOT go there.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Get picked by a good alliance.
nuff' said.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Dropping a ball on it. Directly on it.

Atlas...*tear*

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

short from the battery across the frame.

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

TOO TRUE ! :eek:


I've had something similar happen often back when I was with the vol. fire dept. I'd be settled in watching a movie with a big bowl of popcorn... a alarm would come in which would be a not a big deal, by the time I'd get back to the station ... my movie would be done, pop corn gone, soda gone and someone would ask if I had any more popcorn... never failed :ahh:

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Uhmmm... I know I'm not the only programmer that makes parts too...

Plus... I'm sure I'm not the only programmer that has fixed hardware problems with software...

Yep... I had a pizza disappear when I went to drive once at BMR... apparently, the person who ate it disappeared too. :confused:

-q

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

Let it roll off the table. (Yes they did happen and oddly enough it was nothing more than a box frame with four wheels.)

Re: surefire ways to break you robot
 

..