Coolest thing on your bot??
 

What was the coolest thing on your bot this year. For us it was the latex tubing keeping our arm from coming out of it's footprint and the two stage chassis.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Tough call, but I personally like the freaky chain path that was devised by our chassis team this year. It only fell off once, early in the first of our two regionals, but afterwards I think the team got a good idea of how tight to make the chains so that it works.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I can't pick one, but I would have to say our switch to change Hybrid modes. We set it to knock the trackball down w/ robocoach help, do laps, or do a little of both. We mostly did the first one. We had flippers to had flippers to help herd the ball around (AKA shin busters). Then we used car epoxy to hold the frame together and it worked GREAT.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I loved our drivetrain this year (granted, there wasn't much else to the robot), but my favorite thing about Speedy Debris is the electrical panel. After a bad connection at the distribution block cost us the quarterfinal round at Palmetto in 2007 (and, admittedly, just not liking how we wired Uppercut), we resolved to step our game up for 2008. The new panel has far shorter wire runs, sits lower, is more compact, and is easier to troubleshoot. Oh, and it's not on a part of the robot that'll come loose and start flapping around. ;)

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The final revision of our paws mechanism. It encircled the 300 degrees of the ball, got 2-3 hurdles/match at its peak in Atlanta (needed more practice tbh), and I didn't see anything like at the competitions I went to. Oh yea, and the purple on them helped the elegant aesthetics of the bot too.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Hm...I would have to say our pool noodles. Knocked the balls down 100% of the times. And, to keep them down, we had them bent forward, under our forks, and so when the forks fell down, then our pool noodles went up.

Or it could be the picture of Dean Kamen we put on our pool noodles...I dunno..you pick.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Pictures, please!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The coolest thing on our robot was our elevation system coupled with our aquesition it enabled Xtender to be one of the top offensive robots for 2008.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

In my opinion, the coolest thing on 1511's bot was our bumpers! They were made out of recycled team pants. We had a problem buying our supply of red camo fabric so we got permission to cut up our old cargo pants and use the fabric. Our seamstress extraordinaire pieced them together (reinforced seams and all) and then recut the fabric for the bumpers!

Here is Shelley and her pile of pants!
http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/ga...674_oKJtS-A-LB

and our robot with its bumpers! http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/ga...721_DeMSx-A-LB

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

http://www.rutherfordcontrols.com/pr...D=104&zone=can


Two big honkin' Electro-magnets!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Probablly the coolest thing in this year's robot is the robot functions. It actually THROWS the ball like a "over-the-head pass" in soccer, instead of pushing or rolling the ball over the overpass. and it's not a shooter.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The use of Juggling rings as our gripper.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Our coolest thing was definitely our independent suspensions. We only did this because we used mecanum wheels this year. Each suspension was extremely easy to detach which made quick repairs a breeze. It really helped when I decided to crash our robot into the block at the end of the lane dividing wall, as shown in picture 2. These suspensions also helped us win the Rockwell award.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Our upside down rear bumper.

And our cast aluminum roller claw wheels cast in the shop's foundry using the accumulated scrap from team machining mistakes - they live on to serve a useful purpose. Huzzah.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I remember seeing that coaching 195 that match.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

the worm gears to raise the arm or.....the dong!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I would have to say besides our drivesystem, it would defintely be the kicker underneath the claw that we used to kick the ball foward over the overpass, it was shaped like a high heel and was just a comical/cool looking part of the robot.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

our linkage drive! Pretty much for how new of a system it is, it kept up with everyone on the field (it even matched 1114 for some of the time :D)


I love our linkage!!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Our Team.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

That is cool! What a fun idea!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

our boot :) to kick the ball around.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

For us, it has to be the ball gripper, or more to the point, What folks thought it was before they saw it in action. Leaf blower with was best guess :-)

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/30275

Quick vid of it working

PS: how do you put in thumbnails?

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Beat me to it.

Our team had a lot of random decals all over it this year, it was awesome. "Are you guys really sponsored by MAE?" That was the best line of the year I heard.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

http://geekzilla201.no-ip.org/files/...s/100_2686.jpg

We may not have been able to do much, but this got a few laughs.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The coolest thing on our robot was the IR Control. We had the most powerful IR system in the world on our robot. We had complete control over the robots direction during hybrid and could consitanly get 4 Lines and sometimes a ball.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

One of the coolest things is probably not on the robot itself. Our IR controller was a hardhat with 24 led lights on the front. The hat then ran down to the control box and a nine volt battery.
The coolest things technically on our robot may have been the big yellow 'banana' arms, because they were made to be replaced every 2 matches, but we found out that when they bent, we could just bend them back, so we got a good few matches out of each set of arms. Or maybe our coaches old WOBOT license plate.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I would have to say our hoop. Not only did it win us the Xerox Creativity Award at the Buckeye, I used it to get out of a tight situation in one match. Because the robot has simple center-wheel drive, it can get stuck if one or both of the center wheels is/are lifted off the ground. When this happened on one of the plates stabilizing the overpass, I was able to use the hoop to push against the lane divider and move the robot back onto the track.

It also ended up being much stronger than we expected. See for yourself.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

This way by far the most innovative way of grabbing the ball I saw all year. Sadly, while their bot wasn't always the most effective and couldn't hurdle, 2106 had hands-down the coolest manipulator.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

For 1771 it would have to be the shooter / grabber. The coolest part is the way the whole team got involved. After some initial doubt about the feasibility of a vacuum grabber, all the kids gave input into the final design. As a first year FIRST mentor, I was amazed at what they were able to accomplish. This feature won them the Delphi Innovation trophy at Peachtree, as well as the Xerox creativity award at Championships.

See photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mwilson417/RobotPictures

Early scrimmage highlight video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeQSGmFnKAE

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Its kind lame considering most of the cool responses,
But we have some nifty mechanim wheels, and our tubes are anodized to our colors which looks AWESOME.

And we used to have a cool drum for our lift with a cool swirley design that looked awesome when it spun.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

That is truly one of if not the coolest robot I saw all year. I like how it could shoot the ball as well use suction to grab it.

Nice job on a great design

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

ours definetly has to be our usage of 9 pneumatic cylinders on our tower, arms, and tilting mechanism and having it be 100% pneumatic.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

How did you manage to have enough air? Could you upload some pics.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

completely open:
http://www.mercury1089.com/main/gall...C/IMG_0661.JPG
starting position:
http://www.mercury1089.com/main/gall...C/IMG_0662.JPG
pick up position:
http://www.mercury1089.com/main/gall...l/IMG_0199.JPG

the way that we conserve our air was, instead of actuating to tilt or drop the tower to starting position we just let the weight of the arm bring itself down rather than run air from the storage tanks.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The absolute coolest thing on our robot this year must have been the plastic spoon we ziptied on to the elevator after winning the Judges Award at Davis, Doing Things Right. One of the things the judges specifically mentioned was our team game of Blammo!, where each person gets one plastic spoon, another person as a target and yet another person to target them. Person Blammo!ed loses their spoon and gives their target to the Blammo!er. This game went on for days and resulted in a lot of interesting interteam dynamics. :D

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I would have to choose either between the mecanum wheels that we tried out this year or our line sensor that could sense the taped lines on the field that we used for hybrid

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Perhaps not the most technically oriented, but the coolest feature on 2337's robot was our hammer!

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

I really don't think anything on our robot is that cool or amazing; It was all pretty simple and mostly inspired by other teams.

If anything I'd say the 167:1 Gearbox for two FPs and a 550 made from nearly entirely AM products (except for one plate).

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

2" bore, 24" Pneumatic Cylinder... it was our ball removal solution. On the first day of Waterloo, many teams offered us assistance just because they wanted to see it fire before the day was out.

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

any pics or vids of that cylinder in action???

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

The coolest thing on the 467 bot this year was the unibody chassis design,
no frame was used at all, as the skin supported the weight of the bot.

Body construction:
http://www.team467.org/gallery/main...._itemId=512177



Final Product:
http://www.team467.org/gallery/main...._itemId=512365

Re: Coolest thing on your bot??
 

Wow 2106 that is the coolest manipulator ever.

Wow 467 that is the not only a really sweet skin, but an awesome paint job.

Nice work everyone for sweet designs.

I'm going to say RUSH's coolest feature was our harvester just because the tubes looked really sweet with lightening holes especially when they were spinning with their rubber coating...Not so much now though that they're covered in double sided tape because the rubber wasn't working so well by Atlanta. I'll get a picture from build season and post a link later.