[JVN]

Since Armadillo's twin Mia is competing this weekend and word will probably be out soon anyways, I thought I'd take a minute to discuss a somewhat "controversial" change we made to the robot...

Here is the rough timeline:
Our video was shot on the Saturday before ship, the video itself was edited during the day Sunday and released that Sunday evening... On Monday evening the Robowranglers held an open-house for the Greenville community, then put the robot in the crate late that night (early the next morning).

After the video shoot on Saturday night we (in typical "continuous improvement" fashion) began to discuss what we needed to improve.

We were concerned about the durability of the drivetrain, but didn't have any weight to spare to reinforce it. We were also disappointed at the way the robot traversed the bumps and felt lowering the CG would greatly improve the robots performance.

Early on in our game analysis (day of kickoff) we were trying to do cost-benefit analysis to determine how much those 2-points for hanging would really be worth. At the time we couldn't really tell, because we had no idea how hard it would be to score and had no "easy" way to simulate it. Playing with the actual robot gave us more of an idea of how many balls a match a robot could score.

At the start of our meeting Sunday, we made the decision to remove the hanging mechanism. We would use that weight to reinforce the drivetrain, and lower the CG. By the time the video was posted on Sunday night, the new "baller" Armadillo was up and running. She goes over the bumps smooth as silk forward and backwards, and the drivetrain has been significantly reinforced.

I know some people will question our decision to give up the hanging. I see it as a "no-brainer". When the decision was made, it was like a weight was lifted from my shoulders.

The Thunderchickens went through a similar analysis and made the same decision. Neither robot will be hanging for 2 points this year.

So thank you for all the compliments on our hanging, but you won't ever see Armadillo or Mia do that in competition. Instead you'll see a new-and-improved version of the drivetrain, on a lean, mean, soccer-ball scoring machine.

-John