Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Yeah. That would just be ridiculous. A leap into the history books, for sure.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

No team has ever pulled off a Championship 3-peat. 71 is closest, with 3 wins in 4 years. (2001, 2002, and 2004, and their 2004 robot could win single-hooked too--they did in their first Archimedes match that year.)

If 67 did get a 3-peat, or if they got a fourth win in a year or two, they'd probably top 71 as legend, if 71 did not win a Championship Chairman's first. (67 won both back in 2005.) Though not by much... 71 has yet to win a Championship when 6 robots were on the field, while 67 has not won the Championship when 4 robots were on the field.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Whenever someone discusses "who is the best", or "who is better than who" as engineers and scientists we should always try to go to the numbers to find a data driven answer rather than just having opinion. Everyone has opinions, but Engineers have answers.
In recent years, many scouts have used the OPR rating as an objective measure of team strength. The attached graph shows the OPR trends for some of the scoring leaders as they progressed through the season, as well as the overall league trends. No surprise that 67 ends up on top in this study as well.

I like the fact that FIRST's more recent games actually allow the best teams to become the champions..

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I'm surprised no one has thrown 'innovation' into the hat of criteria to judge 'best' by. Since the Mike's (the OP) reply to the definition of best removes driver performance, I vote 217 or 148. Pre-ship their robots could do everything in the game, but even post-ship their robots were still very strong contenders everywhere they went. 148 removed their hanging mechanism; I don't know whether or not 217 did.

Rarely [in the marketplace and/or in FRC] is it possible to convert a commonly negative aspect of a function into a specific strategic advantage. In nonadrive's case, the two teams flipped the paradigm of long drive bases are unable to effectively turn into a new paradigm of long drive bases prevent a bot from being turned.

Granted, JVN mentioned somewhere that 148 has to rebuild an entire side of the drive train at one point. Yet innovation towards complexity cannot become a complete life cycle solution until all of the flaws are exposed. That the team was able to rebuild the side in only 30 minutes and overcome the challenge resonates loud and far about the team and the design, IMO.

Innovation aside, a very close 2nd would be 968/254. I saw these robots up close in Atlanta. I saw through these robots, literally. If you ever think your high-performing robot is simple, elegant, AND aesthetically pleasing, "you ain't seen nothin' yet".

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

The nonadrive did it in a cool and elegant way, but the idea of a bi-modal drive that turns easily in one configuration and cannot be turned easily in another predates 2010. For example, our 2006 robot had four traction wheels in an arrangement that made being turned very difficult. We deployed a ball caster on a piston (you can see it at the top of the robot here) to lift one pair of wheels off the ground for superb agility. I can remember many other machines over the years that did something similar.

If innovation is the criteria, I would have to nominate 25 as the best robot of 2010. Their fan-based ball harvester was an idea that I (and many others, I'm sure) quickly discarded as feasible, and yet theirs worked to perfection.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Agree on Team 25's collector. We were in the pits next to them at Atlanta and that is certainly a very creative and effective design. Our team tries to explore every possible design solution during the ideation phase of our build season. I can honestly say that we never thought of the Wind Tunnel. Kudos!

The Nona drive is also very cool and is a testament to the power of proper off-season development to populate your "Design Shelf"
Bimodal drives have existed in a variety of forms since 2000 or possibly earlier. FIRST went to the long field in 2000 and many teams needed to go fast and push hard. Since COTs 2 speeds did not exist yet so some teams solved this problem with a bimodal drive

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Indeed. We prototyped a fan system when our initial pvc prototype of a backrolling system left us wanting more. We smoked 2 of the FP's during the design and try. We managed it with a single CIM, but we really weren't happy using one of our CIM's in that system.

25's system was very very impressive.