Chief Delphi - The Real 217 Robot for 2010

She looks pretty in blue! It is a shame that if we ever play together one of us will look weird in the wrong color bumpers...

I cannot say enough how incredible it is to work with the Thunderchickens. We've been collaborating over the past few years, but this is the first year since 2005 that I've been involved in a "full" collaboration with them.

I need to echo Paul's statement that this was a full collaboration. Every system was worked on by both teams, and not a single part of this robot would have been the same without the contributions of both.

It is so refreshing to know you've got so many talented people supporting you. There were times during the season, even when things weren't going according to plan that I could relax knowing "the Chickens have our back, we can solve this together".

The Thunderchickens meet earlier in the evening, while the Robowranglers get a later start. Combine this with the time change (eastern vs central) and it sometimes felt like we were working 2 shifts.

I can gush all day long about how awesome the Thunderchicken Design and Prototyping teams are. I was feeling VERY weird watching all the compliments being paid to 148 in our unveiling thread. We purposely did not mention 217's involvement in the design, because we didn't want to "spoil" the secret of the collaboration, and we wanted them to be able to do their own unveil without us spoiling it (in retrospect, we should have collaborated more on the unveiling ;) right Kate?) Every compliment paid in the 148 thread should be echoed to the chickens 10x over.

I've had the pleasure of becoming close to many of the 217 students over the past few years. They've always been extremely welcoming when I get the urge to put on the green and blue. As a result of this, I feel like I'm a mentor to many of them. When I talk about the pride I feel for "my students" I'm not just referring to the ones who live in Greenville.

Mia and Armadillo represent the culmination of an incredible journey our teams took together. I'm eager to see how they perform on the field. I'm especially happy that I get to join up with 217 at Cass Tech in a few weeks. This year maybe I'll even put on the chicken suit (btw - now that Paul isn't coaching, he has NO excuse not to do it.)

For all those considering collaboration:

It is HARDER than building a robot on a single team.
It is an INCREDIBLE experience, and is worth it -- all you need to do is look at the relationships that have developed between students and mentors on our two teams.

-John