Agawam HS (839) and PotHole Detector Robot

[J Flex 188]

Found this link off of fark.com about a device that detects potholes in the road and tries to fill them underneath before a large crevice forms. I skimmed the article, and found a couple of points that looked like this would be the sort of project a FIRST team would embark on, but in my scanning, I totally missed mention of the robotics club there. Until I saw the video provided, and realised that it looked like they were using the OI, along with drills and pneumatics and various other things that come in the FIRST kit, did I think that a FIRST team might be involved. So yeah, went back to article and found out team number etc etc. Too bad there isnt any mention of FIRST, but this idea is awesome, and the fact that you guys pulled it off

Congrats!

[dubious elise]

i second that congratulations, that is an incredible project for a team to undertake! best of luck!

[J Flex 188]

sorry, i should have searched before i posted this. a thread was started up already, with Rosie Off season project with MIT. :$

[Rosiebotboss]

Thanks for the kudos. We did mention the FIRST program to the reporter, but I guess it did not make th final cut.

On the tech side, yes all the motors, pneumatics, control, spikes, victors, etc are left over kit parts. The entire system, from paper idea to final working protoype is a product of the students. They do 100% of the work, with guidance only from the mentors.

The real thanks goes out to the Lemelson/MIT InvenTeam program. http://web.mit.edu/invent/index.html I highly recommend the program to any FIRST school interested in doing something really challenging and fun. The folks at MIT are GREAT!!!! And to Geophysical Survey Systems from N. Salem NH for their ground penetrating radar system. (That part was a little out of our technical reach!)

For more info PM me...........

[ahecht]

Here is a link to the comment thread over at Fark, if any of you want to chip in...

[David Kelso]

Nice going Agawam. Even if the TV reporter did not say "FIRST Robotics", as soon as we saw the joysticks, we knew it was you!. Great project.

[Elgin Clock]

I had to resurrect this thread because I just saw on ABC World News that Chicago is dealing with one of the worst pothole seasons in their history.

They have a crew of about 20 people that are filling 200 potholes a day at least!

Any chance of sending this technology to the good folks of Chicago to help out this year?

I haven't heard anything about this since it was mentioned way back when here on CD in 2004.

4 years have gone by since then.
Was the project abandoned, or has it moved from the prototype stages already??

[Rosiebotboss]

Well, Elgin, it's a long story. But the short version is we didn't document all of our research and engineering work at the time of development. Consequently, even though we got a "patent pending" we did not follow up with the real application, for a lot of reasons. # 1 reason was that we would never had been able to defend it against infringement because of the lack of documentation.

On the good side, John and I have spoken at Lemelson workshops since our project and stressed the fact that teams needed to document, document, document. I know of at least one that took our story to heart, Team 357, Royal Jester. Their famous Jester Drive is the basis for their InvenTeam project of adapting it to a wheel chair. The last time I spoke to Joe Troy they were persuing going to market.

Road Iron, however is dormant.