Quote:
Originally Posted by thinker&planner
In relation to this, we like to give an award to the team who we think that the students actually helped design and build the robot instead of having their parent NASA engineers build it for them.
Good Luck!
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Excuse me while I rant on your comment here a bit.
Yes, some teams might have more resources than you, but it does not mean at all in the slightest that professional engineers are designing the work. Now I am not saying your comment is aimed at any one team in particular, but I find it kind of unnerving. I see you are from Florida, so I can assume you are talking about one team, but we won't name them here. The fact of the matter is NASA actually sponsors hundreds (not sure on actual number) of teams every year through grants that you can apply for. If you want to be sponsored by NASA I suggest applying for it.
Now there are a number of teams who have engineers help or even design the robot. But I think you are missing the point of FIRST. Its not necessarily to build the best robot, yes it is a competition in a sports based format, but that doesn't excuse to the fact that the core purpose of this program is to
INSPIRE YOU. There are the elite teams that have massive budgets, ultra precise CNCed robots and tend to do very very well. But these teams only got to that point after a lot of hard work. If you set a high goal to reach you can eventually reach it. These elite teams want to win, but they also aim to inspire through excellence. Karthik from Team 1114 just recently did a great TED talk on something similar to this and is quite good. I'll link to that later. Personally as a mentor I took this year off, but I find it very satisfying in both aspects to watch students design their own things, and also to teach students more complex things as I have learned throughout the years in build season/offseason. My goal is to inspire by striving for excellence and teams like the one you just called out have been one of my main sources of inspiration ever since I joined FIRST, they have clearly figured something out.
Oh and finally, If you want to call out a specific team on a public forum please be ready to receive flack. I Honestly think its unacceptable to do something along these lines as they could always see it.
Here is the link for Karthiks TED Talk, his part comes in around 6:44:00. Sit back. Relax. And prepare to be inspired.
http://new.livestream.com/tedx/TEDxUTSC/videos/10683961
As for the OP. A MiniCIM is more than enough, if you need inspiration a source I shall provide.
http://www.youtube.com/user/robotin3days
If you haven't seen it, it was powered by two separate CIM motors each geared up at a slightly different ratio, the final wheel being faster than the first. In fact, I'm pretty sure you could get away with directly driving a wheel from the MiniCIM and be shooting fairly decently.
- Andrew