Somewhere a few years ago GM decided to further expand its membership in FIRST and picked my division CRW to join in with Troy High School. They figured we would do well because Robotics are in our Name (Controls,Robotics,Welding) However little did they know how competitive this whole thing really is. Our last years robot was really cool (in our minds) but then we went to Reigonals and I truely could not believe that there were 60 designs that were not like each other but built to perform the same task. It was really cool to see that some engineers and students think alike, since our robot was similar in concept to CD5 with the telescoping boom and basket, minus feedback and swerve
. Same thing this year but even bigger, first time I saw 308, and CD6 this year at reigonals I though man what amazing feats of engineering have taken place especially in the ultra short timeframe. What keeps you coming back to this? I have to think that almost any engineer is intrigued by seeing ingenious designs, some designs are tiny little additions that made their life easier (Many robots remote mounted the tether and programming ports for easier access, I thought, wow, we complained every time we had to feed the cable to the center of the robot why didn't we do this) To major engineering feats like the 4 wheel steering and autobalancing from off or on the ramp, or ingenious ways to grab the goals, the list goes on. I think I will be in this for a long time simply because there was nothing this impressive to me in Highschool, and maybe not even in college. There are a bunch of people out there that need practical knowledge along with theory, explain to someone gearing and torque they might understand, build, experiment, and see the results of ratios and that might just be the ticket. Finally to all the students out there I leave you with this, most engineers are really kinda kids at heart, we love to play with things, design, build, and even break things, its what engineering is all about, thats why we like FIRST
Matt