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

[Why_A_Username?]

Although I disagree with the thread creator's diction, due to the conotations with racism and poverty, I do wish to share the"jankiest" thing that we on 2910 have done this season.

Our current robot: Lady Bertrude, had one of the shooter motors come completely off during our second to last semi final match at the Glacier Peak week 2 event. The repair consisted of wrapping "Engineering Tape" (duct tape) around it until it was reasonably secured. this allowed us to play in the last match, where the other shooter motor bent horribly to one side.

Also, during build season, we did not build a channel for the climber rope, and promptly allowed it to rest on top of our gatherer angler sprocket and chain.

These kind of jury rigs often are the result of a lack of time or budget, and really ought to be looked at more fondly than anything else, as they add character and identity to a robot, and symbolize creative and clever design in a pinch.

[ratdude747]

Here's another "improvised" repair that was notable.

Boilermaker Regional, 2013. In the finals it was the 1 seed vs 2 seed. 359+868+1747 vs. 234+1741+3147. 3147 had a "unique" design that year, with nothing but a human-loaded "bucket" frisbee shooter and drivetrain in the base, and on top of that a belt-driven climber that also housed the battery and electronics.

Final match 1: 3147's climber breaks at the actuator driving the base-to-climber joint, and can no longer support the climber assembly. They are disabled for the rest of the match as a result. Not good, as that assembly can't be removed (since all the eletricals were inside it). Likewise, with the assembly flopped down, they're not in starting configuration... What to do?

Allaince 2 uses thier timeout coupon, and after the timeouts, 3147 comes out... with a broomstick supporting the climber! IIRC it was also duct taped in, which added to the "jerry rigged" look of the repair. Suffice to say, the stick snapped in match 2, they were disabled once again, and with Alliance 1 winning both matches the competition was settled.

TheBlueAlliance links to the matches:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2013inwl_f1m1
http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2013inwl_f1m2

You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes...

[KevinG]

As a robot inspector I would immediately commend you guys for using a ratchet in such an innovative manner. I love jury-rigged stuff. In a competition full of beautiful robots made with CAD/CAM and precisely machined components I always enjoy seeing students who pull off an innovative solution using unconventional materials.

[Nirnaeth]

As an urban educator, I commend the rational discussion in this thread regarding the language in the OP's title. I think we've arrived at a mature and reasonable conclusion.

That said, I also think that youngsters who are inculcated within a specific cultural context are not yet experienced enough to truly empathize with those in other contexts. This is not their fault, but rather just a lack of life experience. So, I want to provide some more information:

At our district regional this past weekend, the first thing my students-of-color said to me as we walked into the pit area was: "I don't see anyone else that looks like me."

How racism and classism operates is less and less on a personal level these days (which is good!), but more and more on an ontological and systemic level (which is pernicious!). Just go to Google Images right now and type in the word "engineer", and describe the top pictures that pop up. In fact, I'm gonna do that now! Here is what pops up for me:

http://i.imgur.com/pWbqtof.jpg

As you can see, beyond the lack of racial diversity in this representation, there's also a lack of gender diversity. This is emblematic of the normalization of certain representations of students of color. This normalization, which some scholars refer to as anti-blackness, is the ontological construction through media and narrative of what it means to be an urban youth. In essence, when we think about an "urban youth", whatever that may mean, the first images that pop into mind is not an engineer in a shirt-and-tie wearing a hard-hat.

And it's not just people who are privileged that carry those thoughts! Some of my students do as well! That's how pervasive anti-blackness is within our culture. I was judging a debate round once, when two teams were debating this very issue, and a student asked in cross-examination to another student: "Where is the black identity in America that is not equivocated with struggle?" Even at the regional competition this weekend, we were asked by our judges to juxtapose our success as a rookie team with our students' socioeconomic status.

Ultimately, this is why the language we use is super important. Yes, we can take back that term "ghetto", and yes, some of our students might not even see or take offense to that term. However, it's not just this one term. It is the amalgamation of the images and representations they see, the language they hear being used to describe them, the fact that their perception of the role of police in society is very different than majority culture, the fact that they can't hang out at a park in the afternoon without being harassed by authorities, etc. All of these add up to systemic racism.

I'll get off my soap-box now.

EDIT: That picture was gigantic.

[Moonsault]

How about a riveted seat belt to secure a battery in its holder ?

[Moonsault]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Too Funny!
Maybe vendors will see the value in having an "FRC Robot Tested Tough" sticker on their products.

Like in the days of yore when Timex had funny ads showing how tough their watch was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=ynSrvluQBy8

Our team has used 3/8 wrenches in our super shifter.

[Boltman]

I'll submit our ghetto secret weapon that seemed to work out ok

[Ryan_Todd]

Accepting the previous conclusions about choice of language, I'm rolling with "janky" to describe things that look like they shouldn't work, but do anyways (and as such, these are among the best moments for fond recollection in years to come).

You wouldn't know it by looking at our more recent robots, but 862 was once defined by our mastery of all things jank. With inconsistent availability of build spaces and a complete lack of precision tooling (our first in-house drill press was a pretty big deal), we promoted ourselves based on our "old school" build philosophy (if it requires any more tooling than a hacksaw and drill, it can't be done).

During my rookie year in '06, our team had an expanding hopper to hold poof balls; the walls of the hopper were made of fabric, which naturally kept getting torn. In between each match, we patched up any new holes with zip ties, until eventually we ended up with no fabric left at all; just a sheet of zip ties linked together like chainmaille.
(I would also call out our collection roller system from the same year, but that wasn't really all that janky; it just sucked.)

The next year in '07, we initially didn't give our claw enough leverage to consistently clamp onto the inner tubes and hold them stable; a couple of gel insoles zip tied to the claw helped to solve that problem with better friction.
(Don't even get me started on the janked-out ramp we concocted for other bots to climb on top of; alumalite sign panels were never meant for use as weight-bearing elements, much less with 2.5" swiss cheese holes drilled through them!)

During the '08 competition season, we discovered that we had vastly underestimated the side loads that our elbow joint would be subjected to; we managed to get by for a while, bending it back into shape in between each match with a pair of vise grips and our trusty dead-blow hammer... But when it snapped clean in two near the end of the competition season, we ended up needing to replace the whole assembly.
Later during the post-season, we wanted to protect our nice expensive mecanum wheels during demonstrations on concrete; for a while there, we ran the bot with strips of carpet zip tied to the wheels as sacrificial treads.
(We also ended up using the same carpet-tread technique a year later in '09, of course, to protect the FRC-mandated slick wheels!)

[droopy]

I remember seeing a team that duck taped a cim on their robot. When I asked them why they did that they responded with "we ran out of gaff tape"

[GreyingJay]

We brought our practice robot in pieces (drive base and ball manipulator) to the local library for drive practice (yes, our city library lets us drive the robot around! They're awesome!) and realized that we forgot the 3/8" spacer block for where the mechanism bolts onto the frame. The only tools we had brought were the basic ones we knew we needed to bolt the frame on, including an ample set of wrenches. Wrenches that were approximately 3/8" thick...

Fast-forward to a week or two later, and to this conversation:

Me: "I need a 3/8" wrench."
Other team member: "Uh..."
Me: *searching toolbox* "I know we have one. More than one. Where are they?"
Other team member: "Uh..."
Me: "... they're all on the robot, aren't they."
Other team member: "Yup."

That same day I also found all of our small allen keys substituting for hitch pins, holding our bumpers in place.

[happyWobot]

Originally Posted by 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.

I sincerely apologize but you are mistaken. The two ballast on the arms are constructed of .5 inch plate steel. This steel is occasionally used in cooking applications and was a remnant I had left over from a grill project I never completed. They needed something really heavy and very thin. I donated it to the team and it did the job quite nicely. I can assure you that these steel plates were not cut with a hacksaw. I gave up on that barely 2 inches into the plate and an hour later.

[FrankJ]

Perhaps a better name for this thread would have been "Necessity is the mother of invention? "

[Scott England]

I may not have been clear, but do you realize I was talking about 122's robot from the 1997 game, Toroid Terror? This was from before 122 even paired with New Horizons, I think it was with Phoebus High School, but it was so long ago I'm not even sure of that. Jeff Seaton or John Evans might be the only ones who remember anymore.

As I recall, the 1997 robot for 122 had a 36" square base, with the wheels oriented 45 degrees out of plane and a tall base for a two-linked arm so the robot was almost impossible to get through any doorways. The shoulder joint had some surgical tubing and what I'm pretty sure was the lead brick from the small parts catalog to help counter balance the crazy torque that arm had to deal with when delivering inner tubes. The 1998 robot was my first year, so looking at the prior year's, I just remember Ansel Butterfield describing what the parts were, so maybe I heard wrong or my memory is fuzzy after nearly 20 years.

Originally Posted by happyWobot

I sincerely apologize but you are mistaken. The two ballast on the arms are constructed of .5 inch plate steel. This steel is occasionally used in cooking applications and was a remnant I had left over from a grill project I never completed. They needed something really heavy and very thin. I donated it to the team and it did the job quite nicely. I can assure you that these steel plates were not cut with a hacksaw. I gave up on that barely 2 inches into the plate and an hour later.

[AJCaliciuri]

I have a story that probably qualifies as ghetto.

A few years ago, I was at a Regional with a large number of Rookie teams. On Friday morning, walking through the pits, I noticed one of the Rookie teams was charging their robot battery using alligator clips, while it was still plugged into the robot using the Anderson connector.

It was one of the most cringeworthy things I've ever seen at an FRC Regional. Of course, they didn't know any better, so you can't really blame them. Now, one of the first things I look at when I visit a Rookie pit, is how they're charging their batteries.

[happyWobot]

Originally Posted by Scott England

I may not have been clear, but do you realize I was talking about 122's robot from the 1997 game, Toroid Terror? This was from before 122 even paired with New Horizons.....

No, I didnt. Incidentally we have an arm and counterbalance weights on this year's robot. I've only been with 122 since about 08 so would not have any reference for what the 97 year's robot was like. I'm grateful to know that it wasn't a description of this year's bot. The steel was so difficult to cut it was sent out to be done on a Bridgeport. They came back beautifully milled complete with beveled edges to the exact profile we provided. I was really confused why anyone would think it was cut with a hacksaw. Thanks for the clarification.