Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"

[JohnFogarty]

So recently I turned on my TV....something I rarely do.
I watched this show new to the Discovery Channel known as "The Big Brain Theory" and lo and behold they were holding a "Robotics Challenge." So I continued to watch and found out they had three challenges to make a robot to complete with 4 days to do it and a $10,000 budget.
All of the competitors looked to have degrees and had high "IQ's" as shown on the screen.

Here's the full episode...
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/th...iathlabots.htm

Here were the three challenges...
Challenge 1: 100 Yard Dash
Challenge 2: Javelin Throw
Challenge 3: Standing Jump Distance

All I could think about watching the end was....Senior FIRST Robotics High School Students could do better. What are your thoughts?

[EricLeifermann]

I think there are 3 threads already talking about this

see here

and here

also here

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by John_1102

All I could think about watching the end was....Senior FIRST Robotics High School Students could do better. What are your thoughts?

You do know that 3 of the contestants have been part of FIRST, right? One of them has actually been active on Chief Delphi before.

But, we already have a thread about this: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=104045.

[dodar]

$10,000 to make it throw something, drive fast, and jump...You could probably pick any FRC team from the country with atleast 3 years of experience and they could do this. And I also love how they are calling it "a robot" and ye they can detach like 75% of it and launch another minibot; that's a copout of the jump challenge.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by dodar

You could probably pick any FRC team from the country with at least 3 years of experience and they could do this. .

In 4 days with 5 people? I am skeptical.

[dodar]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

In 4 days with 5 people? I am skeptical.

1-2 build engineers and 3-4 4th year build students? I could see it being done pretty easily.

[orangemoore]

The one thing that I have guessed about the show is that all parts were located nearby. It didn't seem like they could get stuff from online.

[Hallry]

Originally Posted by orangemoore

The one thing that I have guessed about the show is that all parts were located nearby. It didn't seem like they could get stuff from online.

Actually...

Originally Posted by ewhitman

We had pretty good shops to work in (1 for each team) and could get parts from wherever we wanted (McMaster, of course, was a go-to choice because we needed stuff FAST).

*Ewhitman, mentor of Girls of Steel (FRC Team 3504), is a contestant on the show.

Gotta love McMaster-Carr's next-day-delivery.

[orangemoore]

And that''s why I guessed.

[eli2410]

Originally Posted by dodar

1-2 build engineers and 3-4 4th year build students? I could see it being done pretty easily.

I don't know, I know that if my team tried to do so with the numbers you suggested and the time they are given, we would still have a lot of trouble with it.

[ewhitman]

While we could get parts from anywhere, lead time was always a problem. This particular build started on a Friday and lasted 4 days. That meant the final day of our build was exactly 1 business day after the first day, severely limiting what components were available to us. Specifically, we had a ton of trouble getting motor controllers in time. I was close to begging local teams for Victors, but we were (before end-of-business on Friday, the first day) able to "next day" ship SyRens to arrive on Monday, the final day of the build.

It was not made clear on the show, but the goal of the javelin toss was not to throw it as far as possible. The producers knew we were capable of throwing it onto the street past the field. Instead, we were to aim for as close as possible to the human world record of 90.5 m. Our second and 3rd shot were 7 m short and 4 m long respectively.



As to whether a typical FIRST team could do it:
I would say we had about the same complexity as a FIRST robot, with 9 actuated degrees of freedom.

A FIRST build lasts 51 days, though the better teams can easily do it in less. We had 4, though they were 12-hour days.

FIRST teams use the same components from year to year, often iterating on previous designs, especially in the drivechain/chassis and electronics subsystems. We didn't even know we were building a robot ahead of time and were unable to source the components that we were familiar with in time. To use the same example as above, the SyRen motor controllers, which nobody on our team had ever used before, arrived Monday morning, about 10 hours before we had to finish.

The rest was probably no harder (or easier) than it looked. You can draw your own conclusions.



For more information and behind-the-scenes notes, go here:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~e.../TBBT/ep4.html

I, and many of the other contestants, write up notes each week. They're mostly all linked here:
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ewhitman/TBBT/

[cmrnpizzo14]

I don't want to say that FIRST is directly responsible for this (insert causation v.s. correlation argument here) but it actually seemed fairly clear to me which contestants had done FIRST before. For example, Amy immediately pointed out safety concerns when Dan was using the mill. Gui, Eric, and Amy were also by far the calmest among everyone when working and designing. I may have been seeing things but I think if you asked me to try and pick out three people that had done FIRST without any prior knowledge of the contestants I could have nailed it.