Demo Ideas

[stundt1]

So I was wondering if anyone could tell me what your team does at demos to entertain the kids. We currently let them drive the robot and are looking for some more ideas. We also are thinking about setting up 5th Gear for one demo.

[M.Wong]

Aside from the main robot, we will bring a smaller, more kid appealing robot.

His name is ZEDD, and he's equipped with an LED cube, music system, voice synthesis, a chat program (so the kids can talk to him), and he used to have a program that would allow children to program him (touchscreen interface with drag and drop blocks of code coupled with a meccanum drive).

Kids love to talk to him, and the really little kids love to watch the LED cube.

[PayneTrain]

Do you have a picture? It sounds awesome and I'd like to see it.

[M.Wong]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Do you have a picture? It sounds awesome and I'd like to see it.

I'll see what I can find. We'll be looking for a way to take him down to St. Louis and hopefully have him up in top shape (had to take his banebot transmissions as we tore up the ones on our comp robot).

[Morality]

Here you go!

[Morality]

This might be a better one...

[Henry Williams]

At 461 we usually, along with an FRC bot, bring lego bots and Vex bots for the kids to control. One thing kids seem to like a whole lot is a scorpion made from legos that senses people using the sonar sensor then "stings" them.

[Dripto]

Also if you keep your old competition bots, some games' robots are particularly conducive to demos. '09 with the brightly colored balls, '06 if your bot shoots the balls in an interesting manner, etc. Sometimes we let kids play "catch" with our '06 bot, as the balls are pretty soft and harmless.

[M.Wong]

Originally Posted by Dripto

Also if you keep your old competition bots, some games' robots are particularly conducive to demos. '09 with the brightly colored balls, '06 if your bot shoots the balls in an interesting manner, etc. Sometimes we let kids play "catch" with our '06 bot, as the balls are pretty soft and harmless.

'09 was probably the safest and most fun robot to demo. During a Memorial Day parade, we attached a small flatbed trailer to an suv. In the trunk of the suv sat our driver, and I sat next to the robot, refilling it. We'd shoot the moon rocks into the crowd, and all the kids would chase them and throw them back to us.

[PayneTrain]

Thanks for the pictures! That looks pretty sweet. What's the black wire tied on the bot? A tether? Weird color for a tether...

When we were strapped for cash last year, our '09 bot was stripped of all electronics. We've restored everything on the robot to original working condition, sans pesky bumpers that just take up space.

Tank drive and a four button lift/dump mechanism makes it really easy for anyone to drive, and it just functions with such majesty. Probably should swap out the regolith wheels for some standard wheels soon.

Our '11 robot was tons of fun to demo at our Rising Freshmen Night because it's almost as simple: tank drive, five-button grabber and joystick lift, with two button minibot deployment.

'10 was a glorified pizza box on mecanum wheels, and therefore, hard to show off.

[M.Wong]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

Thanks for the pictures! That looks pretty sweet. What's the black wire tied on the bot? A tether? Weird color for a tether...

When we were strapped for cash last year, our '09 bot was stripped of all electronics. We've restored everything on the robot to original working condition, sans pesky bumpers that just take up space.

Tank drive and a four button lift/dump mechanism makes it really easy for anyone to drive, and it just functions with such majesty. Probably should swap out the regolith wheels for some standard wheels soon.

Our '11 robot was tons of fun to demo at our Rising Freshmen Night because it's almost as simple: tank drive, five-button grabber and joystick lift, with two button minibot deployment.

'10 was a glorified pizza box on mecanum wheels, and therefore, hard to show off.

The pictures posted were before its completion. Still looking for some better ones.

[Katie_UPS]

We bring vexbots for kids to drive (and then we play the "go hit that guy in the brown shirt" game). Our demo-bot is our '07 bot. At our last demo (with 1732), we had kids feed tubes to the robot and put them on part of this year's rack. Kids really liked "feeding" the robots.

If you have/sell hexbugs, we sometimes have those running around too.

Also: BUTTON MAKING STATION! Get some extra button supplies and have kids make buttons.

[Hawiian Cadder]

we demo whatever robot we have, hopefully we will be able to keep more robots as i think we have freed up a lot of space. currently we have 2010 and 2011 robots to demo. this years robot is impressive as gets a lot taller than the 2010 robot.

[stundt1]

Is there enough room for driving a robot in a 10x10 area do you think?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by stundt1

Is there enough room for driving a robot in a 10x10 area do you think?

I doubt it. HIGHLY doubt it. 10' by 10' is the size of an FRC pit. You won't be able to do much in terms of driving. Arm movement, sure. Spinning, probably. Doing much else, probably not.

Now, if you can bring a minibot pole, you put the robot facing the wrong way to deploy, spin around, and deploy. That ought to be doable in a 10' square area.