Discovery Channel Show "The Big Brain Theory"

[eli2410]

Two things about this awesome show on Discovery:
1. Anyone know if any of the contestants have a connection to FIRST? (I know Eric does, as a mentor to Girls of Steel, and I believe Amy did it)
2. If you are hoping to be a leader for your team, I would highly recommend watching it, so you can see how different leadership styles work.

[Akash Rastogi]

Gui Cavalcanti is an alumni of team 422, class of '02 I believe.

He's posted up some really cool projects online, you should check them all out!

[eli2410]

Where are the pictures posted?

[eli2410]

I got confirmation from Amy, that it only the three of them out of the entire group of competitors. https://twitter.com/Amytheengineer/s...12951338496000

[Alex Cormier]

More info here.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...t=top+engineer

[ewhitman]

Tonight's (7:00 on Discovery; on their website the next day) episode might be of particular interest: we make a FIRST-like robot in 4 days. It must compete in 3 events: 100 m dash, javelin toss, long jump.

Also, there's finally stuff that works!


Preview (and recap of previous episodes) here: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/th...sneak-peek.htm

For those who want more behind-the-scenes information, most of us contestants are putting our perspective somewhere on the internet. Mine, with links to most of the others is here: http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ewhitman/TBBT/

[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.

[eli2410]

So, Red's 100 m beat Usain Bolt's 100 m by about 2 seconds and Blue's Javilin shot would have the second best world record & the standing long jump beats the current world record (though it's not an olympic event anymore) by 4 feet!
I agree with the decision to eliminate Dan, he seems detrimental to all of the teams he has been on. The comment Mark Fuller made about Dan being the first captain to not throw someone else under the bus, though, is wrong. Joe, in the very first episode, accepted that he was the one responsible for his team's failure.

[Bill_B]

I tuned in for this one. Typical TV though. Focus on the "human" drama and less about design decisions and their components. That is, they summarize the result of the teams' decisions, and bypass the give/take at the outset. The jumper was a surprise for me that it was so well balanced and so on. We nerds would have appreciated at least an outline of the static and dynamic calculations that got that little buggy so hopped up, so to speak.

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by Bill_B

I tuned in for this one. Typical TV though. Focus on the "human" drama and less about design decisions and their components. That is, they summarize the result of the teams' decisions, and bypass the give/take at the outset. The jumper was a surprise for me that it was so well balanced and so on. We nerds would have appreciated at least an outline of the static and dynamic calculations that got that little buggy so hopped up, so to speak.

Ghaaa! Only an engineer would find that entertaining.

(I know I would)

[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.