What is the most ghetto thing you've seen on a robot?

[pilleya]

Originally Posted by Aura_

Come on dude everyone knows what he means with ghetto do be so critical about it.

Maybe something like "improvised" could be more suitable to discuss a topic like this.

Yes, we know what he means. But it is time that society breaks away from these traditional and disrespectful terms and descriptions. We are well into the 21st century, lets not condone these sort of descriptions any where, let alone in the FIRST community.

Also many teams struggle with limited resources, let's not take away the pride that they feel when they have finished building their robot, even though it may not live up to some peoples standards. While you may see it as okay, to be submitting photos of parts on your own robots, teams which may be proud of their ability to utilise that tool or part in that way also look at CD

[Whippet]

Our 2013 robot, designed to be a 30-point climber, never worked due to poor engineering and a lack of any tangible top-level design. We missed our first couple of qualifications matches just trying to get the thing to pass inspection, and the climbing mechanism was destroyed a couple matches later in a collision with another robot. We ended up building a simple 10-point climber that was held together entirely by zip ties that we broke at the beginning of the match, allowing the robot to climb at the be beginning of the match and literally nothing else. If we tried to do defense, the zip ties would fail prematurely and remove any ability for is to score points. (Un)fortunately,I am not aware of any existing photographs or videos of said robot.

Our 2014 entry was far more effective, but looked even more poorly constructed:
https://youtu.be/QDLsJxaACUA

[GeeTwo]

Ignoring the possible offense of the term used (and noting in passing that I have heard far more offensive terms that mean the same thing), here are a few examples of creative use of products:

There was a rookie robot at Bayou in 2014 (Aerial Assist) which was largely constructed of scrap metal, such as old road signs. The goalie riser was particularly shocking, but up close, all the rough edges were knocked down and it was a slick piece of work on an extreme budget.

The second iteration of our boulder pickup this year used a Home Depot "Homer Bucket" cut off to about 12" tall and "dissected like a frog" to both help bring the boulder to the centerline of the robot and ensure a clean pour into the launcher. Iterations 3, 4, and 5 have returned to all aluminum and/or polycarb construction, but none have centered the ball as cleanly as #2.

Our 2013 Ultimate Ascent climbing slide was rather curious. A CIM was mounted in a piece of angle which was mounted to a T-hinge, and drove a timing belt sheave directly. The other end of the timing belt drove a "lead screw" composed of threaded rod and a coupling nut. The gh interesting bit was how the belt was tensioned by a turnbuckle hooked into the last hole on the t-hinge. The carriage that this lead screw drove rode on flanged bearings against an inverted rail of aluminum angle. It looked like junk, but it was one of the few mechanical systems of our 2013 robot that did not fail at Bayou.

[JustinCAD]

Well, some people interpret things differently. It all depends on your point of view. I wouldn't say they are considering it as a racist word, more as a word, when taken out of context, could be offensive to others.

CD is more of a formal forums when it comes to FIRST robotics - r/FRC would possibly be more accepting of the word, though I wouldn't suggest using it there in the first place.

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by HurdFIRST

It's not about being politically correct, it's about being inclusive and approachable. (I hope) you wouldn't call someone acting in an undesirable manner gay for the same reason that you shouldn't call the crap you put on your robot ghetto. In doing so you let those who are gay and those who actually live in the ghetto know that they are undesirable and that they are crap respectively.

A counter argument to this is that most of what is actually being described and discussed on topic in this thread has a prominent emphasis of fond feelings for said robot components, how they came to be, and what made them special to us. There are plenty of negative terms that exist that are used in a positive context, as I feel was the intent of the OP. My personal example was that even if its built like crap from a rough build season that makes no difference on its final performance, what you do with it is the part that matters.

Such as building an Einstein field worthy robot out of a leaky shipping container with a 3 phase wiring job that would make any licensed electrician scream in horror. Yes our build practices were sub-par, but that did nothing to deter us from rebuilding practically our whole robot and practicing like mad to be on even footing with the best and the greatest.

Edit: I feel that the term "Janky" has the closest feel and meaning to what OP was going for, let's all just agree to use that and carry on with this thread as intended before it gets any further derailed. Let's just use this as a learning experience.

[chapman1]

Well , it seems that at least one person may have missed the point of this discussion. Seriously, if you were a student in an economically disadvantaged school struggling to come up with funding to even continue from year to year, how do you think you would feel to read comments that essentially make fun of anything you and your team tried to do with limited resources? Is that the spirit that FIRST is trying to inspire?

I'll say it again: the implication that comes with the perjorative "ghetto" (and no, it is not the dictionary definition being discussed here) has no place in FIRST.

[dmaggio744]

Last year our off season bot had lexan rectangles on hinges so they could slide down the totes but not up. Fortunately, they would flip too far rendering our manipulator useless.

The solution resulted in the majority of our robot's usefulness relying on the preserverance of paperclips and rubber bands. If it works, im not complaining

[scooty199]

I'll say as a person of color, I don't allow any of the students on the team I mentor use the term ghetto. I had the discussion and broke down the uses of the term and why it's an issue. I don't use it myself. I see it as offensive, particularly as I came from some not so great environments. As I work on making FIRST and other robotics programs more accessible to other students in my area that aren't all the same, I have to do my part to break some things down.

Now to the actual question..

It would most likely be either the pulleys and pneumatic grippers we built for last year's robot. Had some roughly machined metal that was ill-shaped, poorly cut, not smooth, and not uniform for the cable we were using, along with haphazardly cut stock metal. Actually during a community event while running with the robot I actually nearly got skewered by the thing as the bridge wasn't reset.

[Monochron]

To be honest, a lot of your examples look really professionally put together compared to a lot of robots I have seen, and quite a few that I have been a part of making.
Last minute fixes and adjustments are always a great experience.

[IronicDeadBird]

Wow I didn't think I'd get hit for saying what I did.
I'm not on chief delphi to explain my methodology on how I've dealt with racism all my life.
1339 has had issues in previous years that were dealt with in different ways. I'll see if I can get photos

[David Lame]

In 2014 (Aerial Assist), we were having problems with the ball falling out of our shooter. Our shooter was a catapult of aluminum bar, bent to have a circular footprint where the ball rested until being shot. The problem was that it wasn't deep enough. As the drivers raced off after picking up the ball, the acceleration would sometimes cause the ball to drop out. We needed some way to keep it in, but whatever we used had to be something we could pull it over as we picked it up off the floor.

Of course we discovered this problem at our first district, and were trying to fix it during "out of bag" time just before the second district. Mentors had come up with a few proposals, but testing showed them inadequate. We had a few failures. The time was running out. Then someone saw the broom. It was a push broom, 28" wide, with tall, soft, bristles. It fit perfectly. The bristles were easy to drag the ball over with our pickup mechanism, but they provided just enough resistance to keep the ball in the cradle before we shot.

The only thing that made it look a little not so...err...that word, was that it fit so well and worked so well you very well might have thought that we did it on purpose.

[Maximillian]

Last year one of the gussets on our elevator broke a day before we left for IRI. We somehow didn't have a replacement so we made up a janky solution to hold on one of the bearings using another VEX gusset bolted on. We ended up leaving it like that for our two other off seasons after IRI...

[BaileyJoseph166]

Last year we quickly realized while we were at NE District Champs that we needed a can burglar... and so starts the tale of the Jank Shank...

It was an awful piece of 1/2 conduit and some hacksawed brackets with a horribly mounted piston on the side of our robot. It worked with mighty hutzpa! We eventually took it off do to complications with the integrity of the device when we went to St. Louis.

But... when we competed at the offseason event River Rage in NH there was once again a need for the Shank! I was able to borrow and not return (with permission) a piece of square conduit from team 138 and I constructed a new Jank Shank. This monstrosity was held together purely by electrical tape, it was awful. It took be a total of 20 minutes, and the entire time I kept telling people to not expect much, it would only work once. If anyone who was there remembers how this new Shank worked... good. It worked once in a semifinal auto to grab the Great RC painted orange like a Great Pumpkin (Charlie Brown!) and everyone thought it broke accidentally because it was all bent up afterward. It was meant to do that!

And that is the most janky thing I have ever seen on a robot I built!

[Paul Richardson]

Let me just say that there's a whole lot of people chiming in here that I don't think have any real insight into this discussion on "ghetto".

Eastside Memorial High School, a 'borderline failing' high school which replaced an actually 'failed' high school, used to host FRC Team 3320, which I helped mentor from 2013 until they disbanded mid-season in 2015. This school serves a very poor population, with 86.9% of students listed as "Economically Disadvantaged" on the school's webpage.

Originally Posted by chapman1

how do you think you would feel to read comments that essentially make fun of anything you and your team tried to do with limited resources?

Those kids wouldn't make that connection at all. Time and effort turns scraps into elegant, functional robots. Just because you have limited resources doesn't mean you make ghetto robots, and it especially doesn't mean that you think others are making fun of you when they say their own stuff is ghetto. It's a bunch of self-deprecating humor and generally fond memories of fun build sessions making funny mechanisms. Have a laugh about it.

Now, implying that those kids think everything they'd ever made must be crap because the team didn't have resources, that I have a problem with.

[Scott England]

Back on the topic of "least professionally engineered solution deployed on a robot"

a literal lead brick from the small parts catalog, 1997, roughly hewn with a hack saw to get the total robot weight to the exact maximum. You can still find the basic item at small parts (since they were purchased by amazon)

http://www.amazon.com/Small-Parts-Le.../dp/B003SLEVSA


on FRC Team # 122, used to counterbalance a long arm.