Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

That reminds me of something that happened last year.... In Atlanta we were waiting for our match behind the black curtain. I saw some volunteers walking by, looking very focused, so I looked over. Dean Kamen was driving around in a smart car and the volunteers were making sure he didnt hit anybody. That was not one of the things i expected to see.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

In 2007 on the trip to Florida regional, I had to use the restroom at the back of the bus. My teammates thought it was funny to put their foot on the door handle so I couldnt get out. The doorlatch broke and I was stuck in the bus restroom!!! Worst off, the light was wired to the lock, so when the door was unlocked, the light was off. After 20 minutes I was able to pick the lock with my student ID. I am a mentor this year and I still haven't lived that down.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

I liked when we got a small tear in our bumper fabric and stuck a bandaid over it. This was not at competition, but we brought the bumper to the CT Regional as a spare to keep in the pits, and we got some comments on it.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

One time, we needed a piece of lexan cut and just had a hand saw. We had three people keeping the lexan from wobbling and it still kept shaking. Our safety person was telling us to be careful because it was making him nervous, when a guy came up to us and game us a safety point. He said that we were doing a great job of being safe. I half expected that he was going to get onto us. He even said that he would have given two if we had safety gloves on at the time.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

Ouch, man now I feel bad knowing we did that.

Sorry bout that if it was us..unintentional damage of course. Long time ago though.

Lol at the story about 1676 though haha:P

To make up for it, let me know if you guys ever need any help.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

In 2005 I waited in line behind some kids from the Duct Tape Bandits (467). From what I gathered, it seems that someone had squirted a mayonaise packet into one of their duct tape helmets, which the kid not realized until after he put on his helmet. :ahh:

I've always enjoyed the awkward post-autonomous apologies when a robot does something it was "definitely not supposed to do." They were especially common last year with that those line penalties

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

Mine was probably last year in a practice match ... our robot autonomously rammed our team mates robot and flipped it over with our pneumatic arm.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

Palmetto Regional, 2005, on two counts--both involving 179 in their sole experience there. (Geeze, they come up here, win our regional, and we never hear from them again! You figure they'd at least send a postcard... ;))

The first was Thursday. Also attending Palmetto that year (and also not seen in the state since) was 25, Evil Machine 3 in tow. I was scoping out 179's robot, chatting with Dan Quiggle at the time. As if he were talking about the weather forecast, he nonchalantly mentions "By the way, you're about to get bearhugged." Two arms snuck under mine, and my 250-pound self was about a foot off the ground courtesy of Big Mike. Supposedly, there are photos somewhere. Never seen them.

The second came as a side effect of 1293's hats that year. It was the first year of the sawblade motif, and the team cut hats out of corrugated plastic in the shape. Painted up, they looked pretty good--I still have one. I was wearing mine in the pits (combined with my typical hairdo) when Tytus Gerrish (then 179's driver) comes up and randomly says "You look like Jesus." I didn't think I had the beard for it, but such is life.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

in the semifinals of the KCR, are robot stopped dead, damaging our hopes at nationals. Our fate was sealed by a fast robot that sole purpose was to rack up points by going round and round. by the way robotcanuck1676, how did you get that eagle scout bar? i am a fellow eagle and would like that to appear for me.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

At a practice match last year, one of our robots had a software crash and plowed through the field barrier in hybrid mode , which resulted in like 6 people trying to restrain the robot and power it down. And this was with a binary that had literally no autonomous code, and the problem never happened again :ahh:
And at the same event, our other robot managed to go through the plywood center divider, requiring people to run out with duct tape to fix it

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

In 2005 and 2006 when my team made it to einstein, the weirdest/funniest/ most crazy part was when I looked up into the stands during those matchs and seeing just how many people filled the georgia dome to watch these robots play on a field. People filled every sit on the 1st and part of the 2nd tier of the stadium on that side of the arena. Just kind of strange to me...but I guess a sign the FIRST is changing the culture.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

Our team had an interesting experience last year. During our first (and only) practice match at the Colorado regional, our robot's arm drove itself past what we designed it for, and actually destroyed the shoulder joint. The sprocket was bent, acrylic cracked, chain slipped, c-channel bent, limit switches mangled, the whole 9 yards. We spent the next 2 and a half days of competition trying to get it in working order again. We determined that there was a loose crystal somewhere in the IFI control system, and during the special hybrid mode, it just caused those parts of the robot to freak out. We were allowed to rent one for the rest of the competition, but still had one close call where it did it again before we figured out what was causing the problem. Now I am really glad we have the cRIO, because NI has much higher QC than IFI IMO.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

After FRC opening ceremonies in Atlanta, we have to move the FLL tables back out onto Einstein. I nab the teams in Gallileo queueing to help with the hefty work. Of course, all the VIP's are still milling about, and we have to get these 8x8 tables through. Last year one kid started yelling, "Robot, robot coming through!" Oh yeah, that'll work.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

You should have asked the VIPs to help, remind them that they are on the competition floor after all.

Re: Strangest moments at compititions
 

Last year at a mini practice regional before shipping that our team went to our center of gravity wasn't equal when the elevator went up to retrieve a ball from the over pass. It rocked back and forth and just about fell over :ahh:
i just about shaking and screaming and praying inside that it wouldn't . . . to our relief it didn't :yikes: