Thread: Week 5 OPR
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Unread 04-04-2011, 19:28
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Nick Lawrence Nick Lawrence is offline
Commander Canada
FRC #3940 (CyberTooth, AndyMark)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Rookie Year: 2005
Location: Kokomo, IN
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Re: Week 5 OPR

Quote:
Originally Posted by Karthik View Post
As someone who has seen everyone of 1503's matches in person, let me set the record straight. Their driver has done an excellent job controlling that machine, but to give him all or even most of the credit is a disservice to that entire team and their design. I think Nick would be the first person to admit this. Remember, Nick was their driver last year, with an extremely complicated robot, and their results were less than favorable by their own standards. The reason 1503 is so successful this year is definitely the simplicity. The robot is easy and intuitive to drive, the geometry is optimized perfectly for top row scoring and the single speed drivetrain handles like a dream. I'm quite confident that if they went with a more complicated approach, they would not have been nearly as successful. A simple, well thought out robot will make any driver and team look better. Full credit to all of 1503 for recognizing this and building a robot that's dominant at smaller subset of the game, as opposed to mediocre at all facets.
Thank you Karthik. You beat me to the punch here. We're not good just because I have some driver skill, but because this robot is extremely simple an maneuverable. We learned a LOT last year, and vowed to follow the principal "three things well, not five things sub-par." This started with our VRC robot. We didn't bother with hanging, we kept refining our manipulator instead. Worked out well for that robot too with two silver medals.

I hope everyone in FIRST takes notice to our robot this year. Simple works, and we have the banners to back up that philosophy.

-Nick
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Success doesn't always equate to match wins. It's about the wins off the field.