Chief Delphi - Any funny stories during the season?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday (Post 944323)

At Philly, during a qualification match, a robot began smoking. And by smoking, I dont mean a trickle of smoke, I mean a serious amount billowing out. The team refused to E-Stop their robot in autonomous, due to the penalty, so it continued smoking. The robot was also in their offensive zone, so they could hardly see it. When Tele-Op starts, they run to the controls, and try to drive it. When they realize that it is smoking, they start jamming their E-Stop button. Nothing happens. They are all like WTF!!!!! Our team and other members other people on the stands start yelling, and finally the refs E-Stop the robot, and end the game. A volunteer runs onto the field with a fire extinguisher looking dangerously ready to pull the trigger. The smoke soon stops coming out, and then the team runs on to the field to see what the issue was. They fixed it, and they won the match.

I was there too, that was 816, Anomoly, our sister-team, so to say. The greatest part about the incident was that the team had an impressive track record of blowing up their electronics. What happened this time was that their digital sidecar shorted the 12v 20amp input power to the pwm outputs, and sent 20 amps of power through the PWM wires, causing every single pwm wire to burst into flames. They ended up fixing it right there on the field, played that round and won. in fact, they became captain of the 8th alliance too!!

Someone at the Philly regional also asked for a flux capacitor and a cooling condensor rod. At our previous competition in Baltimore I asked for the fictional piston return spring.

There is this shy redhead on our team. He is bright and excellent at CAD, though. On our bus ride home from the Chesapeake regional, a kid steals another student's shoe off her foot,and tossed it to the front of the bus. A different kid picks up the shoe. He quickly turns and throws this shoe back to the back of the bus. Now if you think the guy who threw the shoe at President Bush was good, you haven't seen this kid. This shoe does not flop in the air. No, it spirals toe-first, like a football. So this shoe is traveling at mach 2 towards the back of the bus, and out of sheer dumb luck, the redhead leans out into the hall of the bus, and the second he did, BAM! The shoe nails him right in the nose, and he starts to bleed. We start calling to our coach, who is in the very front of the bus, talking to the other chaperone. After a good 30 seconds he stands up and says "Can't you see I'm trying to have a conversation here?" I scream "Look at all the blood!" and our coach turns around, notices, and his jaw just drops to the floor.

At the philadelphia regional, we became notorious for our highly defensive robot. It has a top speed of 15+ feet/sec, has a custom-built chassis that puts our center of gravity 3 inches off the ground, and in the middle of our robot, and a ground clearance of just 1 inch, yet we can travel over the bump at full speed without damaging the bot. This thing was so powerful at blocking that when we got up to speed to charge another robot, the entire crowd would quiet in anticipation.

One match, I missed the robot and drove at full speed right into the side wall of the field, where a referee who wasn't paying attention was standing just on the other side. We hit the wall so hard the entire field shook, including driver stations. We startled the referee so much he nearly jumped into the stands! The game announcer told us not to scare the referees anymore.

We scored a headshot on the head referee with a soccer ball.

We ended up flipping a robot which was top seed after they said they were un-tippable. The head referee knew they were boasting about their "un-tippable robot" and we walked away with no penalties. When asked, he said it was quite entertaining to watch.

Today, I found that another team that was there made a facebook group dedicated to our robot! Truly the funniest thing I have ever seen!

Also, what luck is it that I randomly found this thread and posted a response to the captain of our alliance in the finals!