1)Team Name Sie-H20-Bots (See-Hoe-Bots)
2)Team Number 237
3)How many people on the team? ~40 - ~20 Students ~20 Adults - more or less
4)How many guys? Probably about 25 (HS Students and Adults)
5)How Many girls? Probably about 15 (HS Students and Adults)
6)What does everyone do- Everybody fundraises and then everyone is on different sub teams as well. IE: Mechanical, Electrical, etc.
Design Questions
1) How long does it take to design various things on your robot (hours, days) 1 or 2 days at the most - But that is only after 2 days of intense learning of the game inside and out and figuring out what we want to do to be competitive in the said game.
Function over form!
2) Do you prototype first? To some extent. We use some prototyping to decide on what system we want to do. IE: Arms for grabbing balls, Chassis type - More function over form.
3) How many people design things? about 5 maybe, it depends.
4) How many people build things? Everyone on the mechanical team, so about 10
5) How many hours a day do people put in towards the robot? We meet oficially 4 hours each weekday during the build season, and some use more, some use less time cause of other commitments
6) Do you get professional engineers to help your team, or is it all teachers and students? Engineers, Machinists, Parents, Teachers and other supporters
Strategy Questions
1) How much experience do your drivers have? (years) 1 great year. Both drivers were rookies in the 2004 season, and we did great this year.
2) How much experience did your drivers get with the robot? As much as we could, almost a full week before shipping (thanks to the extended deadline this year), and of course all the practice time and matches during robotic events.
3) Do you design to do everything well, or do you design to do one specific task extraordinarily?
One specific task extrodinarily.
4) Do you have a very special thing on your robot, some cool design or whatnot? and If so what is it. Please describe it.
We Climb the steps with 6 wheel drive and 2 speed tranny and hang on the bar and defend with our unique shimmy device that allowed us to transvers across the bar and defend it.
We had other back-up systems, but because of weight issues, we left them off.
5) How much work did you put into the autonomous mode? The first week or so of building deciding what we wanted to do in autonomous. about 2 days before shipping testing it with the robot and all 6 weeks developing and learning the language structure.
6) What does your autonomous do? It was supposed to knock off the ball from the tee if we wanted, but we ony got that to work sucessfully a couple times during competition, so we changed it to just line up to the platform for our drivers to climb it in driver control mode.
It is all dead-reckoning based BTW.
Other information
Speed (fps) 13fps in high, 4fps in low 2 speed gearbox borrowed and modified a little bit from Team 116
Robustness (1-10) (10 being highest)
9 - We had no major system problems this year.. A first for us!! Yay!! But were prone to tipping in the beginning, but we fixed that.. (I hope)
Agility (1-10)
7 - We can push pretty hard in low, and make good speed in high, but we can't turn on a dime cause of our chassis design, but oh well..
During the competition, did you feel that your alliance partner let your team down in some way?
Once in a while, but that always happens, it's the luck of the draw in a random alliance pairing.
Did you let your alliance partner down in any way?
Probably, we can't always anticipate every move, but we did pretty good none-the-less.
Where were you seeded before the finals round started (at the end of the qualification matches?) NJ regional - 1st with an undefeated record
CT/UTC Regional - 6th place Nationals - 11th place, but got bumped to 8th and was an alliance captain in the finals and made it to the semi's! w00t!
Beantown Blitz - 30 out of 33.. Ouch..
Did you win any awards during the competition (spirit, leadership in control, etc.?) 2004 - NJ Regional - GM Industrial Design Award and Regional winner and a MOE team award for Gracious Professionalism, An award for an extraordinary gadget from RAGE Robotics Team 173. - CT/UTC Regional: Motorola Quality Award - Nationals: Team award from The Martians team 494
As for the other years, we have won other awards, but I'll leave those out, cause I'm guessing you just mean this year.
Personal Info
What is your name? Elgin Clock
Age? 24
How long have you been on the team? Since 2001 - Got involved through a college CAD class, and thought it was a one day meeting. Turns out it was the first day of the 6 weeks and I stayed for all 6 weeks and beyond.. lol
What is your role on the team? CAD Drafter/ Web Team Helper/ and other misc. stuff.