What do you want your robot to do?

[Wayne Doenges]

Would you rather have a Swiss Army Knife robot that does allot of things so-so, or a specialized robot that does one thing great, or one in between?

Ours will probably do one thing really well

Wayne Doenges
CAD Mentor

[NoodleKnight]

More specifically, we're hoping to make our robot do one thing really well, but also be able to possibly, maybe, remotely, somewhat, do other things too.

[YesManNo]

Ours will do everything well....

[Koko Ed]

Nothing is more dangerous in FIRST than trying to make a robot that does everything (too complicated. too many things that can break). Better to make a specialized, reliable robot that other teams can count on.

[csquared05]

last year, my team ended up trying to make a pocket knife for a bot. It failed miserably. It fell over, we had to cut functions off, etc. It was a nightmare. Just remember the KISS theory, Keep It Simple Stupid. If you follow that theory, your robot will most likely work well

[Zanella BR]

Originally Posted by csquared05

last year, my team ended up trying to make a pocket knife for a bot. It failed miserably. It fell over, we had to cut functions off, etc. It was a nightmare. Just remember the KISS theory, Keep It Simple Stupid. If you follow that theory, your robot will most likely work well

Certainly a great opinion
I agree

[ShadowKnight]

Yeah, swiss army bots rarely actually work out in practice quite the way that they worked in theory. You're spreading precious resources, like time, far to thin, and the result can often be that your robot CAN do many thinjgs, but none very well at all. Specializing this year is MUCH easier than it was last year because the large point boosters all result from roughly the same thing, "stacking." Our team will be going for a bot that stacks, and stacks well

[Mark Pettit]

I think that everybody should consider putting a switch on their robot to either disable or change their autonomous mode (e.g. if switch on, autonomous mode off).
Since the best use of autonomous is PROBABLY getting a vision-tetra or two on the center goal, many teams will be going for it. If your alliance partner can do it better than you, then you should probably turn yours off (or at least redeploy your autonomous to do something different) so that you don't hinder your teammate's effort in any way. Such a switch will keep you from having to disable autonomous by re-downloading your code before the match.

[Twstdkittie]

I want one that can do what it has to in any situation. Not necessarily that it can do everything, but just what it has to. Definitely somewhere in between the swiss army knife idea and a specialized bot.

[Jasmin]

We were discussing last night some of the things we would like our robot to be able to do. Basically, we'll be really strong in one area, with still the possibility to do something else, but maybe not as well as what we're strong with. Definitely not a swiss army 'bot, though. As others have stated, that gets complicated quick.

[RudimentaryPeni]

Well personally i want ours to do everything while balencing checkbooks, doing homework, playing the violin, and making us coffee all at the same time.

but having a specialized robot seems like it would work good becuase its one thing to worry about going wrong, probably the coffee maker.

[Twstdkittie]

Originally Posted by RudimentaryPeni

Well personally i want ours to do everything while balencing checkbooks, doing homework, playing the violin, and making us coffee all at the same time.

but having a specialized robot seems like it would work good becuase its one thing to worry about going wrong, probably the coffee maker.

Hey, that would be fun. I would love a good robot to make me expresso in the morning. Mmm... expresso....

[Cyberguy34000]

Last year team 662 had a robot that pretty much did one thing and one thing only, hang. We had the coolest arm design too, the was mostly powered by a winch. It worked incredibly well, we managed to hang for those 50 points almost every single time. The few times it didn't was because either the cable broke or the cable got tangled up, then it was a mad dash to herd balls. We could also decap enemy multipliers while we were hanging, so that was pretty cool.

This year though, the scoring possibilities are quite a bit more limited, but the ability to play certain strategies is more exotic this time around. We're still in the design phase for our robot. So we'll have to just wait and see what comes about.

[DrShadowSML]

Our robot will probably be really good at 2 things. Pushing enemies away from our rows and have good stacking capability.