[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by RollinTDollin

Though when they went to hurdling exclusively, they added about 20 pounds or so of weight to the front of their robot for counterweight. If they decided to go back to using both bots, then they would have to remove that weight. That may affect their hurdling ability. They are a very good hurdling bot, fast and efficient, so I dont think they would move away from what made them successful.

After the Week 1 Granite State Regional, when 1519's dual-configuration robot was disallowed, the team decided to separate the dual-configuration robot into two distinct robots for the offseason. (We weren't registered for any other regular season tournaments.)

Originally, in order to achieve the dual-configuration design, both configurations had made significant design compromises in order to share the electronics board and make weight. (At GSR, 1519's hurdling configuration weighed only 87 pounds prior to adding 30 pounds of dumbells for the elimination rounds -- lots of teams were astonished at the fact that a competitive 'bot could be 33 pounds underweight!) By going to two separate robots, some of the design compromises needed for the dual-configuration robot could be eliminated.

For BattleCry (our first offseason tournament) significant changes were made to the now distinct robots. For the hurdling robot, two additional drive CIMs were added, and some of the structural members of the lower frame (e.g. the battery box) were enhanced with stronger (heavier) components. Testing showed that the dumbbells were no longer needed, as the extra drive CIMs not only provided more power, but helped address the center-of-gravity issues that led to the addition of the dumbbells at GSR. This hurdling robot (Fezzik) was the one that competed in all official rounds for 1519 at BattleCry. As fielded at BattleCry, Fezzik weighed 95.3 pounds, giving the robot excellent acceleration and preserving weight budget for some new features which should be implemented by IRI.

1519's other robot, Speed Racer, was a substitute at BattleCry for teams which didn't show up on Friday or couldn't make their regularly scheduled match due to technical problems. A number of changes were also made to Speed Racer, including removal of the extra Victors (which had been for Fezzik's arm), re-arrangement of the electronics board to give better placement for the gyro and radio, and various frame reinforcements to add structural strength. (The frames of both robot configurations had been more fragile than we would have liked in order to make the 120-pound weight limit when they were a single dual-config robot.) Speed Racer competed in about a half-dozen rounds at BattleCry, but was ineligible for alliance selections, being that it was only a substitute robot.

At this time, restoring the two robots to a single dual-configuration robot would require a fair bit of work, and would lessen the capabilities of either robot. Accordingly, for IRI we'll be competing with only the hurdling configuration, which we think is a very competitive robot in its own right.

Assuming we have room on our trip to IRI (which is actually a concern for the 18-hour drive) we'll try to bring Speed Racer as well, so that folks at IRI that haven't seen it can have a look-see. We'd be glad to run it as a substitute robot in place of teams with technical difficulties (like we did at BattleCry) if the IRI organizers want for us to do so, but we'll be using Fezzik to represent 1519 in the official rounds.

We're really looking forward to IRI and are honored to have been invited. My only regret is that I personally won't be able to attend IRI due to pre-existing vacation plans.