Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Hey,

So I wasn't around in 2002, but I have heard many stories about team 71's robot that year. I have seen video from Einstein, and I am very curious as to how the "walking" mechanism worked. If someone from 71, or anyone who remembers, could explain it or has pics, that would great.

Thanks,

Seth

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Here's a video:

http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team/71/2002

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I just want to make sure I'm getting this right lol:
It was impossible for the other alliance to win if 71 got their thing out quick enough, am I right?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I wasn't around in 2002 (FLL maybe) but from this video on the HOT team site link
it looks like it was really hard to overcome the Beast's ability to grab onto all three of the goals in the first seconds of the match. The HOTBOT tried to ram their arm, and that match the Beast only grabbed two goals. BUT, they also grabbed onto our robot and dragged it with them for the rest of the match.

I'm curious as to why 71 didn't grab any of the goals in the second Einstein final match (from the vids on TBA).

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

It looks like SPAM knocked them off their path and then 71 couldn't get turned back around.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

It was a combination of SPAM's (team 180) incredible speed and a well thrown soccer ball at the beginning of the match. The ball ended up under
71's machine as it fell into it's operating mode as SPAM made contact. Our alliance (311 308 180) went on to beat them that match to make it a 1-1 tie in the Finals.

I have to mention that one of our alliance partners, team 308 from Walled Lake Michigan. Their robot was able to pick up 2 180lb goals and then move forward into the scoring zones. Looking back I appreciate the ability to do that given the limited motor selections, transmissions and technology available at the time. You have to realize this was pre-AndyMark after all!

Team 311 only lasted 2 more years after that. The Championship Finals at Epcot was one of our highest achievements.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

what the heck is this "tether" the MC is talking about? it looks like some sort of ribbon? Does it extend the robot to the "end zone?" what is the significance in that?

sorry, I was only 25 then and in school at the time.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

One of the methods to gain points in 2002 was having part of your robot in your "endzone" at the end of the match (segment closest to your alliance station). Any part of the robot counted, so many teams devised tethers they dropped and left there and/or "runners" that would drive back on a tether towards the end of the match in order to get these points while still being in position to control the goals.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Here's a description of the 2002 game: http://www.team237.com/2002game.html
Here's a good photo of their robot that year: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/12168
Their feet were made from filecards. They didn't actually lift the cards, instead they shuffled them back and fourth to move the bot forward. Try it yourself, put a filecard face down on the carpet and try to push it back and fourth. Now imagine a hundred pounds of weight on the card and you can see why nobody could push 71 backwards.
Once 71 had the goals that year could be pushed sideways, but not backwards. You can see it happen in one of the videos I have from 2002, but I don't remeber which one. http://www.students.ccsu.edu/~rodriguezjel/2002/

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

What are filecards?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I heard from someone that played against that robot that it tracked the middle goal, but if the goal moved then they would only be able to grapple one goal. the middle one. They also said that they developed an auton that would run out to the middle of the field and ram the middle goal in order to throw them off.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

They're kind of like the metal brushes you use to clean a grill. The name comes from their use - cleaning files.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Filecards are used to clean files, and have many small metal teeth/fingers. Try sticking one into a carpet sometime and pulling. Good luck moving it.

We (190) used them as well, but as anchors. The robot would drive in between two goals, latch on with cables/hooks and drive past into our zone. The anchors would push down into the carpet, raise the drive wheels, and then pull the goals back. It was literally impossible to move the robot. I had always hoped to go head-to-head with 71 to see if they could move us without ripping a hole in the carpet underneath one/both of our robots, but we never met up on the field.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

There was no autonomous back then, so no tracking. It was all driver speed and robot quickness.
71 could be beat out to the middle goal, like 180 did, but it was rare.
Here's the national semi, team 71 v team 60. 60 just beats 71 to the goals, but 71 wins out. It was possibly the most anticipated match of the year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAmAn...eature=related
71 could grab and push as mentioned, 60 could grab 2 goals, lift them off the carpet and spin them around the robot so no one could grab them. Quite impressive when you consider those goals weighed about 180lbs each.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Those final matches still haunt me. I was the coach for 308 back in those days. During the first match of the finals on the way to the goals a shaft in our right gearbox shifted by about 1/8" and the first stage of gears got shredded, making us basically useless for the entire finals. It still kills me. Would we have won? Who knows - but I wish I would've gotten to see the matchup played out.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

The only way to move the goals 190 hung onto was to literally rip the robot in half. Didn't that happen at Battlecry that year?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

We (311/308/180) faced 190 in the first round of the eliminations that year.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

At the Midwest regional that year my team, 93, beat them to the center goal by about 1 sec and rammed it into them lifting the top of their robot into the middle of the two platforms lifting all their wheels of the ground causing them to not move the rest of the match. We ended up winning the match, I've never heard a crowd cheer louder in all my years since, when that happened.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Indeed the robot did rip in half. From what I have been told, we planted to the ground and were pulled apart when two other teams decided pull on the goals we had latched onto. However, they were able to put the robot back together and go out the next match and win BattleCry. My, how things have changed :) .

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Not totally true. There was no autonomous period--that came in 2003--but I have heard that one particular team did run mostly without driver control. There were targets on the goals that sensors could see.

Remember, you don't have to have an autonomous period to be autonomous. You can run the entire match autonomously.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Tis true. The mast in the center of the goals had retroreflective tape on them that played horrible games with pretty much any photographer using flash...
But not many teams used them for their intended tracking purposes.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I know exactly what you mean. You guys had an awesome machine. Looking back though I can truly say it was a great time, win or lose!

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Oh how I love these types of threads.

We get veteran members of the FIRST community coming in and sharing their wisdom of FIRST history.

It's always nice to hear stories from back before I was really involved. 2002 was my first year, as a spectator, in FIRST.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

You guys hit us so hard that the goal was embedded in the front plate of our robot by a good quarter inch. It took three of us to pry it off I believe.

In the second match of the Einstein finals, SPAM beat us to the center goal and our arms missed the outer goals. We were left without any goals and that robot was not designed to do anything more than move forward fast and then move forward slow. I tried to do what I could to turn the robot and the intent was to push the goals and all robots into our endzone, but that never happened as an axle got bent as our robot got smashed against the side rail. We sat the third match as 173 and 66 finished what we had started.

Ah the good old days :D

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Kevin,

could you describe how the walking/shuffling mechanism was designed/how it worked?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Thanks for clearing up what actually happened Kevin. I know from our vantage point at the time we could not actually see much of the match.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I found another video that I had on my laptop from 2002, so I uploaded it to YouTube. It is of the Midwest Regional finals. There is a great closeup of the walking filecards from 0:23 to 0:27.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4slvnvPHW8

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

dang it Chris, why'd you have to find video of that match? If you watch the last 10 seconds of the match, our manipulator shot two balls into the goal. Those 2 balls cost us the match because they counted for the other alliance. The story that I remember the manipulator saying was that he was coached to empty out whatever balls we had at the end of the match. Needless to say, we replaced coach Dan with Raul in 2003 and have been doing well since...except for that little winch brake incident at Great Lakes in 2004 :yikes:

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

You want to hear something funny? I remembered that about this match and I was trying like crazy to find another video with a closeup, but I couldn't so I posted this one. I was hoping people would see the closeup and stop the video before it got to the end to save you guys the shame. But then you had to bring it up...

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I remember that little winch brake incident in 04. :ahh: Now I feel old... That robot was pretty awesome though.

The more you guys talk about 2002 the more I wish I was around then.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Is that 45 shooting the ball straight up to themselves at the top of the hopper :ahh:?? To think, that was only 7 years ago and you'd be hard pressed to find a team that did that this year.

I don't have sound on right now, so the game doesn't look too exciting. I'll have to read the rules later. I too wish I was around in 2002!

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

It's furn to see all these names I recognize. :D

If I recall correctly the file cards were on short legs that allowed the file cards to pivot back and up when the carrier was moved forward. They were beautifully constructed.

They were having issues with being turned around at West Michigan. It was a purpose built machine, it could only move forward and couldn't really turn, so if you could turn them around they couldn't move the goals into their home zone. They had added file card material to the rear wheels to prevent this at the championship.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Yeah, that was us. I think that was the lightest conveyor ever... made of nothing!

This was a typical Mark Koors invention. During brainstorming, he said "let's just throw the balls up into the basket with a wheel". The students and other mentors (me included) just said... "yeah, right". After many weeks of tweaking, this ball thrower was very efficient.

I have the dubious honor of being the coach in this match AND the dreadful F-3 match at Boilermaker this year. Maybe I should remind our alliance before each final-finals match "hey... let's try not to score on ourselves."

Andy B.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

If I remember right, you got points if any of your robot was in either alliance's endzone. So teams could double up their endzone points. I remember seeing a robot at the LA regional that had a 40 foot ARM that would try to reach the other zone across the field at the end of a match.

Our team had to go up against the Bionic Bulldogs (60) that year in the Finals at SVR - the robot that team 60 built would grab two goals in the first few seconds of each match and your only defense against them was to beat them there. One team rebuilt their gearing to try and basically ram 60 as hard as they could in teh first few moments of the match. During the lunch break on Friday at SVR, team 60 did a demo for a news crew where they grabbed both goals, lifted them, and then spun them at about 60 rpm. Quite a sight, however they never spun them during match play.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Pardon my vague recollection of 2002 rules (it looks like you lost 31-30), and not to rub it in, but why didn't 519 release the goal and leave the zone to make the last two balls 111 scored a moot point?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

They spun 'em in L.A., at least.

I do know of at least one team that could have beaten them despite losing the race to the goals, though. 330 was capable (tested in a practice match, both agreeing) of shoving 60 under the right conditions, like with 330's 3rd goal grabber close to the floor. (It was a wedge with a hole cut for pipes, and still has the scratches from that practice match.)

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

The good 'ol wayback machine came to the rescue again. From the competition manual in terms of scoringZones were numbered 1-5 with 1 and 2 being on the blue side, 3 being neutral, and 4-5 being red.

Yeah, I think the score was 31-30, and like you said, if 519 got out of the zone, we would have only gotten 20 points. Maybe they couldn't release? Maybe they were preventing us from running away with the goal? Who knows...

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I like thinking about previous years games with LARGE objects that we moved around with the robots and had to interacts with the pieces. The giant "puck", the 3 goals in 02, the tetertotter.... things that were easy but not easy to move.

-Mike AA

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Looking back at how those 180lb goals were handled and how some were able to move around with over 400lbs of total weight. All of this powered by drill motors alone or drill motor/FP combinations.

I wonder what we could have done if we had CIM's, Toughboxes or AM shifters?

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian C (Post 854824) Looking back at how those 180lb goals were handled and how some were able to move around with over 400lbs of total weight. All of this powered by drill motors alone or drill motor/FP combinations.

Actually, I believe that was the first year with CIMs, though they had an integrated pinion, instead of the keyed shaft we're familiar with now.

And there were teams out there with an andymark transmission. (One team at least: 45 ;) ), and there were multispeed transmissions of many varieties (in 2002 45 developed what would become the first iteration of what we now know as the andymark transmission).

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

The walkers on 71 were in fact powered by CIMs. It was one heck of a reduction, but unfortunately, I do not remember off the top of my head what it was.

I wish I could provide more detail on how exactly the feet worked. It was a cam that made the feet move back and forth linearly, but due to the direction of the metal on the file cards, it would only grip when moving one direction. Beyond that, I'm the wrong person to ask.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

The ridiculous capabilities of this robot are what push me ever year to try to think of a game winning strategy.The first thing that goes through my mind after seeing the game each year is "WWBD?" with this particular robot usually in mind.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Thanks for the correction, I completely forgot about the CIM"S that year. We opted to not use them and went with the drill motors and custom made transmission that year. I actually went out to check our team 311's old 2002 machine just to make sure (it's in our shed out back)

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Expect for 1250 :)

And after seeing 71's 2002 robot, I have been hard pressed to find a robot that achieves the game challenge as well as they did back then.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I think the only other bot I've ever seen that has been about as powerful and decisive has been 1114 in 2008. I'd like to see some of these older scoring pieces brought back, they seem more impressive than the past couple of years somehow. Not the same exact game but similar scoring devices.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

You mean, like soccer balls or kickballs?

They would make sense, in terms of availability.

I mean, compared to orbit balls, they're everywhere (however, it's not quite as easy to make your own....)

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I'm more thinking of the big movable goals in 2002 or hanging on the bar in 2004, for example. Big, in general, is just more impressive to watch. Though understanding the systems used to move many small objects can be equally impressive, actually watching from up in the stands usually isn't.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I would love to see a game like 2002 appear very soon. That game was so simple in terms of game pieces and field, but brought some intense gameplay. The big game pieces also look amazing to spectators. When showing off your robot to parents, it also looks more impressive to have giant games pieces to manipulate compared to little balls (although a 2006 robot that can track and shoot at a range of 10'+ is very very impressive).

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Big game pieces are great if you have the room for them. They are also heavy and hard to transport. Id rather have a game piece that I can transport and show off what it does over something that weighs nearly 200 lbs.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

Actually the soccer balls of 2002 were not widely available. You pretty much were stuck with the one or two that were in the kit. They had a unique surface coating that made them handle differently than readily available soccer balls. They also cost like $10 or $20 each.

My favorite robot that year was 980's "popcorn popper" that shot the balls straight up and bounced them into a hopper at the top. The first time they tried it the ball blew through the bouncing plate and hit the ceiling, of the gym.

I still use 71's robot as an example of the tradeoffs of power. They were able to transmit a tremendous amunt of torque to the floor, but to do so they travelled very slowly. But they had something like 2 minutes to go 3 or 4 feet. They had all the time in the world. I also remember seeing file card shaped spots where the pile had been ripped off of the carpet at IRI.

Re: Team 71's 2002 robot
 

I think 25's robot from 2006 could also be considered as one of those "Greatest Robots Ever Created" even though they didn't win Championships.

But yeah... the problem with this year is that there isn't a very impressive task to take on. In 2002, you could drive down the line of balls in a handful of seconds and earn hundreds of "wows" like team 95 did. In 2007, you lift two robots in a second like 1717 did.