Best Robot of 2010
 

What is your opinion on the best team of the 2010 FRC competition season?
Personally I think the two best robots were 229 and 217.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Define best!?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Best robot or best team?

Best robot, hands-down, is 469. No argument, no discrepancies, no doubt.

Best team? Mine. :p

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

FIRST presents the Chairman's Award to the team they think is best, and the best robot tends to win matches and earn trophies. The best team might not have the best robot. What are you really asking?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Any robot that inspired more than a single student to pursue their passion was the best robot.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

My vote would have to go to one of the underwater team that enabled the capping of the oil well. This is a pretty big deal as my year after year favorites have been on Mars for quite some time.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

There is no argument for any team that is not 469. No team has ever had such a dramatic effect on the game this year than them. If you've ever seen 469 compete, especially at MSC, Curie, or IRI, you really just can't dispute it...

If you put any redirection bot aside, though, you can have a fun argument and discussion on the relative merits of great "overall" teams like 67, 33, 1718, 1519, 294, and 1625, but I feel 1114 was a cut above the rest in all aspects of the game.

If you break it down by zone and role it gets more interesting. Some robots were pretty good overall but GREAT in the front. 359, 910, and 971 are the immediate first choices there. The backbot was a role I felt that teams that really excelled at had the most competitive success this year, as it was a role a lot of teams were willing to give up or throw their second pick at but was a lot more important than many alliances thought at selection time. 294 is the superstar here, plus 3138, 217 / 148, and 33.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

There's still two months left in 2010. Isn't this discussion a little premature?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

The apple doesn't fall far ...

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

To take your witticism seriously for a minute, I would say not.

Let's take the main contenders for the prize: 1114, 469, 67, 33, 1718, 1519, 294, and 1625 in my opinion as outlined below. Michigan is done with offseasons basically right now, so you can cut those teams out which leaves 294, 1519, and 1625. 294's traditional offseason participation is over, and 1114 and 1625 don't have offseasons in their region. That leaves 1519, whom might go to Bash at the Beach or one of the other late NE offseasons, but while they're great, I doubt they will suddenly grow above and beyond the other "contenders" here.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I cant believe no one has thrown 2056's hat into the ring yet?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

WMRI? Michigan isn't quite done yet.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Surprised no one has mentioned 254 and 233 yet. 254 handily won two regionals, was #1 seed in their division, and 233 was their pick (in a stacked division).

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I wouldnt say 233 as a best robot contender for the year. 254 yes. 233 no. Now, From thinking of teams that also made it to Einstein, I would mention that rookie team that made it. I believe they were The Comets, but idr the team ####

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I agree that 254 should certainly be in the conversation for best robot of the year.

However, I don't think 233 fits in the category. 233 had a rough start to the season (missed elims in Florida and semis in LA). As usual, 233 were masters of continuous improvement and were much better at championships than they were in Florida or LA.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

They didn't perform great at Florida, but certainly improved for LA, and improved leaps and bounds for champs.

You don't get picked by the #1 seed (above team 33) in a stacked division by a team with great scouting without being one of the best.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Even still, if you are gonna be considered the best robot of the YEAR, you have to have performed at that level through the entire year. For instance: 67, 25, 254, 469, 33, 1114, 2056, 1625, each did ungodly amazing at each and every event they attended.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

It's kind of hard to argue about a great being "worse" or imply they're even "bad" but watching video and seeing matches with 233 and 254 compared to the others, it's clear that 254 is one of the most dominant robots in FRC this year, and 233 was getting there at Championships, but in my mind was just below that level. Obviously they're a fantastic team I wouldn't hesitate to join an alliance with, though.

It's hard for this kind of thing not to just end up being "a list of every good robot" so I kept my list to like 6 or 7 teams.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

1114 has an off season well in range of them (Rah Cha Cha Ruckus) but ever since their terrific 2005 robot unleashed a mushroom cloud of agony at the last Canada's Wonderland event they probably aren't too enthused about overtaxing their very much used robot. Plus it didn't help that they haven't found a new home for their off season since Canada's Wonderland got bought out and booted the event out of their park (a big mistake on their behalf).

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

The best robot, a mixture between design, aesthetics, and performance(not driver performance)

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

469, hands down, for both design and performance. Aesthetics are a secondary concern, but 469 still looked pretty good (especially when you were on their alliance!).

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Idk, 67 was the perfect robot for this game and it had awesome flames on the drivetrain

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

With all due respect to probably the best regular robot in the game, how can they score faster and control the game more effectively than 469?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Excuse me Chris, but we have been working very hard since IRI to work on our robot and learn from mistakes. We now have a pincher, and a hanger/redirector like the beast assembly on top of team 2337 so I would highly watch out for us at River Rage! Oh wait, all that was in my dreams! ;) Not much has happened in our shop since IRI.

I wouldn't say that our robot was one of the best even though that is an honor to be in the same sentence as those robots listed! I would vote for team 67. They were very good on the field in each zone and their hanger took at least 2 seconds of game play to hang. 1114, 33, 254, and 469 come close behind.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

If I recall, they did beat them in the finals, but not that two wins means that robot A is better than robot B. 469 relied highly upon the skill of their partners with them scoring 2 balls in auto before going into the tower; meanwhile, 67 spends their time clearing the mid zone and cleaning up the near zone.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

The way 469 lost was in a way where everything had to go wrong, and everything did for them, rather than teammate failure. This combined with the "ultimate alliance" of the best backbot in FRC with one of the best overall robots in FRC (and hideously underrated 177) ended up being kind of a "perfect storm" for 469's alliance. The field change threw their robot way off.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

3357 :D

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Funny, how many people called 1114 + 469 the ultimate alliance? I am included in that. But if your robot scoring is dependent on the field set-up then there are much better robots out there. And 469 was still able to score as I recall.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

If you go back and watch the videos, many of the shots were a little bit off, whereas their setup was optimal for the Curie field.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

No it isn't. You can't have 1200 robots that are all the best. "Best" implies singular. Your definition of "best" can vary, but I don't see any reasonable interpretation of best involving 1000+ in quantity.

I always feel these answers are a GP cop out (sorry for picking on you in particular). The OP would seem to not mean the most happy fuzzy warm feel good robot in FIRST, but the best robot competitively. It's like if you asked someone who the best NFL player is and they said "player xyz because he gives the most money to charity and is a really nice guy".

That said, complete tossup of 469/1114 for me. 469 changed the way the game was played but on their own they were not quite as effective. One on on 1114 is my pick.

So basically they were like a wild card team making it to the Super Bowl to play the 18-0 Patriots. The results at the final buzzer are all that matters-nobody looks back in history to see what the champion's regular season record was.

Obviously 233 didn't win championships so it's not a perfect analogy and I certainly wouldn't call myself impartial in the discussion, but I think it's shortsighted to not consider a team because they put their strongest performance forth when it mattered the most, and didn't necessarily excel at the regional level.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I like 2337 for innovation in making a suspension able robot. There's no doubt 469 holds a place in this catagory too; we were paired with them in Atlanta once and they were beastly. One I like that wasn't 469 or 1114 would be team 1625. They were part of the 2nd seed alliance at Greater KC, and did one heck of a good job.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Wow...we are getting almost like NASCAR here. While I won't discount anyones posts so far because some of this is very arguable and some is very supportable with statistics, the original question still begs of opinion to me. Cant wait to see the winning teams standing in the spotlight, swapping hats back and forth and saying something like " Well this time the Dewalt, Andymark, Crayola number 7 robot did pretty well but we got a realy good crew and Bubba did a great job today when the back end got loose in turn 4"

How many days till we start again...oh wait, a lot of us havent stopped from last time!!

Mikey

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Don't get me wrong, 469 had an outstanding robot, but I don't think they were the best. They had one flaw; they needed another great robot to fuel their fire. Yes, with a solid alliance, they could rack up points upwards of 25. How often did that happen? About six. I bet 469's robot, including offseason, was in close to 150 matches. On the other hand, there were a lot of matches with non redirecting robots where the scores were upwards of 20 points, especially at IRI. My point; if you put 469 in a one on one match verses one of those teams that Chris mentioned earlier, chances are that they will lose. I haven't seen 573 in this topic, yet we basically won a one on one(say that ten times fast) verse 469 at Troy. I'm not saying that we're better than them; the banners should speak for themselves, but they needed a decent second robot to give them their edge.

One of my favorite robots from this year and also one of the best was 33's. Honestly, I felt a little bad for them, since they lost in the finals at Kettering and Troy. At the state championship, they were semifinalists; the lowest they ever qualified in 2010. On Archimedes, they were on an alliance that 573 envied, yet they ended up finalists again. One of the things I noticed about their robot was that it looked very good, yet when you get a look at it up close, you'll notice minor details like pieces of sheet metal that wasn't cut straight or rivets that don't line up. You notice the evidence that students built the robot, and they were still one of the best. They had a decent kicker and a great hanger, not to mention the team itself. They were always spirited and you could tell that they had pride. All of this gave them a lot of respect in my book.

Another bot that I loved was 33's friends, 1718. They had a monster robot this year. Their kicker was excellent and they had the ability to vertically suspend and still thread the tunnel. Their drivetrain was also very impressive. They were able to push 469 over the bump at MARC, which was unbelievable(and pretty funny as well). 573 got to work with them during the mentor tournament at MARC(along with 1918), and it was a great experience. Just like 33, 1718 was spirited and proud of their robot and accomplishments.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Yes, there were many matches with over 20 points, but I don't think you will find a team that was apart of them as much as 469 was.

I think 469 was clearly the best team this with, leaving 67 and 1114 to battle for 2nd. I think a more interesting debate would be between 469 from 2010 and 1114 from 2008.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

1114 from 2008 wins that debate. Which team was more dominant in their back-to-back championship wins: 67 or 71?

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

You're implying any other normal alliance ever got more than 25 points without 469. That happened once, maybe twice. It was not a normal occurrence. 469 had that happen 6 times.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

71, but those were games more easily won by a single robot. And 67 got a little bit lucky this year.

1114 is 2008 was more of a game-breaker than 469 this year, imo. If only because of 469's field alignment requirement.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

71.

Don't get me wrong, HOT was amazing in both their Championship runs in 2009 and 2010, but the dominance put forth by Beatty in 2001 and 2002 is something we'll probably never see again in FIRST. By far the most awe-inspiring two year stretch in FIRST history. I get excited just thinking about it.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

I know that it is blasphemy to doubt or contradict karthek but I think that 67 has to be the most dominant 2 year span ever. Even though they are a little skewed for the fact that they get so many more matches because of the district system in MI, the fact that when they left that kind of system and still won over 90% of their matches is just mind-blowing.

One bad thing is that the only way that i know of 71's dominance of 2001 and 2002 is the 2 or 3 videos from Einstein in 2002, which is epic by the way, and those who tell stories of those glorious days.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

As for the best robot of 2010, I vote 1114 and 469. Either one was pure awesomeness.

469 has a habit of showing up on our match lists as our last qualification, against us. And we have lost every time we have gone against them (except once, when we tied).

We only went against 1114 at IRI. Ties to eternity. They are certainly the best normal robot that exists, followed by 67, who is very, very good.



As for 71 vs 67, I would have to say 71

in 2001, they did everything themselves, and did not need to rely on their partners. Edit: I've heard they were the only team that could beat us.

in 2002, they once again did everything themselves, controlling everything themselves and making sure that if they didn't win, it was because they made a mistake

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Like I sortof mentioned, 71 was given a greater chance to be dominant. Absolutely they took that opportunity, and made the best robot possible, and destroyed the competition, but at the same time, a similar chance to game-break hasn't been given since then.

Personally, I like including some sort of chance of game-breaking, but with 1800 teams and so many great innovators, we might end up with a few too many, and Einstein would just be a toss-up (or whoever has a better/faster auton... that might be good).

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

In regard to the 71 vs 67 debate, I think it is hard for most of us (myself included) to really participate in the debate, because we weren't in FIRST back when 71 was dominate. I'm not going to say who I think was better (because I simply don't have enough knowledge to make a good decision), but if a gun was pointed at my head, I would listen to the people who witnessed both teams first hand, and go with 71.


(I guess this means I should stop my "Terry Bradshaw is the most overrated QB in NFL History" rant...but, come'on, a hall of fame player with 3 pro bowl trips and 2 more TDs than INTs?!)

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

As someone who was there during the 71 years I would have to toss my vote over to them. Although 67 is and continues to be a top contender, the sheer feeling of excitement that I got from 71 vs. 60 in 2002 was amazing. I have to say though that I had some of that feeling of excitement return as I saw 67 climb after the buzzer in this year's finals :yikes:

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

The Beatty of 2001-2002 is the stuff of legends.


Which is definitely what the 2009,2010,...,? HOT has the potential to be as well.

Someday in the future anyway.

Re: Best Robot of 2010
 

Ok so just to throw this in there, IF 67 were to make it a 3-peat, would they jump over 71 as the greatest team in FIRST?

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.