[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by JamesTerm

I was talking to the team this morning about the importance of art hence (STEAM vs. STEM), and immediately thought about team 67's 2012 robot...

I know this is slightly off-topic but since compliments are going towards team 67. I just wanted to add this one in as well... here it is around a little more than a year later and that 2012 robot still sticks in my mind. There is something about it that was a beautiful work of art and so unique. A belayed kudos goes out to you guys... I just wonder how much of artistic influence went into the design.

James,

Thanks for the comments. I can't say the robot was designed specifically with art in mind. The most important deisgn criteria is always performance in any of the parts / systems we design. But we do try to abide by the saying -- if it doesn't look good (right), it probably isn't good (right).

So much of the time we continue to iterate our designs until they are as simple as possible, while maintaining functionality.

Any of the other things that we did to help increase the appearance of the machine (vinly on the arms, blacked out cover, *bumpers, etc...) were done after the fact to help with the aesthetics.

*I believe we had 3 sets of bumpers that elevated in appearance throughout the season. Ahh...the things you can do when the robot works well..