[Alan Ing]

Hi all,

At the Kickoff, it seemed that First was sort of encouraging teams to try and build a robot that could pick up and throw a ball into the goal.

To my knowledge, only a handful of teams (including ours) attempted to do this with any success. While collecting a ton of balls quickly like all the great ball collectors/dumpers mentioned elsewhere was probably the best way to go to win the competition with a ball machine, having a machine that could shoot balls seemed like a cool and fun idea.

Our machine (Team 368) scoops up about 7 balls (with or without the goal), loads them in a rack, stores them, and launches them one at a time into the goal via a self loading catapult (Sort of like the Sunny D machine of years past). Basically we made a short range catapult that could be used either attached to a goal or not. We had some difficulties with it, but for the most part we held our own and could deliver most of the balls that we picked up fairing pretty well in the two regionals and the championships. I think the most balls we ever picked up and launched in to the goal during competition was about 18 (Not nearly what the good ball collectors/dumpers could do, but still respectful).

I really didn't get a chance to check out every robot at the competitions we went to, so my question is, who else made a ball throwing machine, was it successful, and finally which ball throwing machine did you like the best. Pictures anyone?