Re: Team 190 Promo Video
 

To jump in to the roller claw vs standard claw debate, it depends on what advantage you're talking about. From a pure performance standpoint, disregarding all design consequences such as weight complexity, etc., a well-built roller claw will typically outperform a well-built piston claw.

Unfortunately, as with most things in life, it's not that simple. 190's 2007 robot can attest to a non-roller claw being an advantage, as the gripper on that robot weighed only 2 lbs, and thus allowed us to have a gripper. We chose a roller claw for this game because we had the weight and resources available, and were able to prototype enough iterations to drill down the design you see in the video. As JesseK points out, however, just because it's the best solution for one team doesn't mean it's the best solution for every team.

As far as spare parts go, this claw has plenty of spare parts, since it's mostly COTS items. The fabricated plastic parts weigh probably 1-2 lbs each, so they don't eat much into those 30 lbs.

Re: Team 190 Promo Video
 

I watched you guys at WPI over the past weekend, outstanding minibot. By far one of the best ones at the competition. That intake rollers were also awesome, it was fun going up against you guys. Good luck in St.Louis!

Re: Team 190 Promo Video
 

Thanks! What most people don't know is that our minibot was running the entire event with smoked tetrix motors. We burned them the day before the regional in testing, but since it still worked well and reliably, we made the decision not to change it and risk compromising the reliability. We're building V2 for DC, so we should be even faster there.

Congrats on the Chairman's, see you in St. Louis!