2002 Zone Zeal

[Kevin Kolodziej]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

I thought the game was great, up until the finals at IRI, when we had an entanglement issue, and the alliance of 71, 111, and 93 was disqualified.

Andy B.

Man, I hate it when that happens!!

Thanks for pointing me out, Al! Can't believe that was nearly 10 years ago already!

I agree with Cory though. Some of my all-time favorite robots came from that game. I ran into one of the mentors from Rage just a few weeks ago at IRI and he shared a fun story: 173 was the #1 seed in the division. We (71) were somewhere in the middle of the pack, as we always were that year, as the robot was not designed to score well - just win (and back then, rankings were based on points, not w/l records...we would intentionally restrict one of the arms from extending and purposely grab only 2 of the three goals to help with the ranking situation during qualifying). Some members of 173 didn't want to play with us, but others argued that they'd rather play with us than against us, and that's why they ended up picking us. We literally marched through the finals onto Einstein and then in Finals match 2, SPAM 180 beat us to the goals and pushed us back into the barrier and we ended up bending an axle. We sat out for finals match 3 and 173 went out and proved why they were the #1 seed with one of the best ball harvesters I've ever seen. It was so awesome to see an alliance have that kind of diversity. 66 was the third robot and was vital to both game plans - they would help us stay on track when we'd grab all three goals and when 173 was out, they would play some exceptional defense. Oh..and they had the best of the best of the mini-bots too!

Ah, the good old days...

[Nuttyman54]

The Kingman robot that year is one of the legends of FIRST, and one of my all time favorites. Does anyone have video of 60 actually spinning the goals? I've been searching for years, and I've only been able to find 3 videos. 2 are from SVR, and they appear to have mechanical problems, the other is vs 71 (linked above).

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

The Kingman robot that year is one of the legends of FIRST, and one of my all time favorites. Does anyone have video of 60 actually spinning the goals? I've been searching for years, and I've only been able to find 3 videos. 2 are from SVR, and they appear to have mechanical problems, the other is vs 71 (linked above).

I wish we could lift goals again, heavy goals.

[AcesJames]

After reading through this thread, I got curious, and earlier tonight I pulled 176's 2002 robot off the closet shelf and started rebuilding her.

Man, oh man, is that robot a brute. Here are just a few specs from the bot thus far.

The whole frame is all welded 3/8" or 1/2" thick aluminum angle
It's a 4wd configuration with dually style pneumatic tires (8 wheels total)
It has 2 speed transmissions, 1 CIM per trans, 5fps low gear, 25fps high gear (hearsay from a mentor from 2002)
It has a 360* turret mounted to the top, powered by a drill motor
It has 2 opposing arms with pneumatic claws, driven out by lead screws on drill motors to grab goals
It has an IR tower on top, for autonomous driving


So far, a mentor and I have gotten the top turret taken off, and rewired the drive base and pneumatics and tested it on a work bench with an old control station. Everything seems to work well. The next step is to rewire the turret, remount it, and then put the IR tower back on top, and test the code.

If there's anything I've learned from looking at our old robots, it's that they were definitely built under a lot less constraints, and they were built tough. I don't know if it's true for many other teams as old as 176, but the late 90s and early 2000s were when we built our most mechanically complex robots, because that's when we also had the most mentor/engineer/sponsor support. The welding, CNC work, and complexity of parts we used back then puts our past few recent robots to shame.

[O'Sancheski]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

After reading through this thread, I got curious, and earlier tonight I pulled 176's 2002 robot off the closet shelf and started rebuilding her.

Man, oh man, is that robot a brute. Here are just a few specs from the bot thus far.

The whole frame is all welded 3/8" or 1/2" thick aluminum angle
It's a 4wd configuration with dually style pneumatic tires (8 wheels total)
It has 2 speed transmissions, 1 CIM per trans, 5fps low gear, 25fps high gear (hearsay from a mentor from 2002)
It has a 360* turret mounted to the top, powered by a drill motor
It has 2 opposing arms with pneumatic claws, driven out by lead screws on drill motors to grab goals
It has an IR tower on top, for autonomous driving


So far, a mentor and I have gotten the top turret taken off, and rewired the drive base and pneumatics and tested it on a work bench with an old control station. Everything seems to work well. The next step is to rewire the turret, remount it, and then put the IR tower back on top, and test the code.

If there's anything I've learned from looking at our old robots, it's that they were definitely built under a lot less constraints, and they were built tough. I don't know if it's true for many other teams as old as 176, but the late 90s and early 2000s were when we built our most mechanically complex robots, because that's when we also had the most mentor/engineer/sponsor support. The welding, CNC work, and complexity of parts we used back then puts our past few recent robots to shame.

Can't agree with you any more on this comment. Everything you said is sooooo true. It's a cool robot though.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

After reading through this thread, I got curious, and earlier tonight I pulled 176's 2002 robot off the closet shelf and started rebuilding her.

Man, oh man, is that robot a brute. Here are just a few specs from the bot thus far.

The whole frame is all welded 3/8" or 1/2" thick aluminum angle
It's a 4wd configuration with dually style pneumatic tires (8 wheels total)
It has 2 speed transmissions, 1 CIM per trans, 5fps low gear, 25fps high gear (hearsay from a mentor from 2002)
It has a 360* turret mounted to the top, powered by a drill motor
It has 2 opposing arms with pneumatic claws, driven out by lead screws on drill motors to grab goals
It has an IR tower on top, for autonomous driving

That would be an impressive feat. There's no possible way it's geared for 25 ft/s though. With one CIM per gearbox you would never get to full speed.

Plus everyone knows 60 and 180 were the two fastest robots that year, and they weren't that fast

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Tyler Olds

Yeah I forget who the referee was for that................

I think I remember who that was...

Totally agree. Teams were all over the map in terms of creativity between how to grab the goals, minibots, ball collectors, strategies....it all just made for an awesome design challenge that was met with tons of creative ideas.

Let's not forget the magic tongue to reach into two zones at the same time.

[DUCKIE]

Zone Zeal was my senior year, and MOEhawk was my 14' wide baby.
(What a year to be on pit crew!)

I guess I should apologize on behalf of MOE for the 7' extension rule...
I can't help but feel that we are at least partially responsible for that one.

[AcesJames]

Originally Posted by Cory

That would be an impressive feat. There's no possible way it's geared for 25 ft/s though. With one CIM per gearbox you would never get to full speed.

Plus everyone knows 60 and 180 were the two fastest robots that year, and they weren't that fast

Looks like it's time for me to pull out the radar gun from the closet then. Like I said in the post, that "spec" was hearsay from one of the mentors, so I couldn't confirm it.

[Tyler Olds]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Let's not forget the magic tongue to reach into two zones at the same time.

This was one of the coolest and most exciting moments of this year. There were minibots, motorized tape measures, and then there was 111's "tongue". Right when time hit 0, the “tongue” would roll out and it seemed to take a minute to cross the other side of the field (Zone 4 to Zone 1). Honestly it was more fun when it didn't work because you would hear the groans from the crowd in disappointment.

Don't mean to go on and on about this thread, but I think that a lot of people did not appreciate the immense amount of strategy that this game required. Remember that in qualifying, the winning alliance got 3x the losing alliances score. I remember at the Midwest Regional (when it was at Northwestern), that 71 placed somewhere in the bottom 50% because they would always shutout the opposing alliance.

[JamesCH95]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

wooo
who remembers the 02 UTC New England Regional with Woodie as Emcee?

121, 69, and 103 were able to hold off grasshopper, rage, and others. I'm biased, but what a GREAT set of finals

It certainly was a great set of matches, but reminds me of how frustrated I was with the rather abusive pinning rules that year.