[Al Skierkiewicz]

We had been experiencing sparking right from the beginning once we had built the ramp. The right combination of matierials and humidity would cause electrostatic discharges. Even simply pushing the robot on the ICE would generate enough voltage to tingle your arm. This discharge led to some pretty scary times when the controlller would reset or our custom circuit board would get corrupted. Eventually, we added shielding, and a variety of other things including some trailing wire for discharge. In humid envoronments it wasn't a problem, but in Chicago in the dead of winter it was pretty bad.