The most unlikely robot on Einstein

[jijiglobe]

If you're anything like me (and I suspect most of the FIRST community). Einstein has always been an exalted place, separate from the mortal plane. Robots that make it to Einstein are beautiful, precision-made, masterpieces that function at the highest caliber of the game with near perfection. I never thought that my team would be able to make it to Einstein (at least not as an alliance captain or first pick)

This year, however, there was a robot on Einstein that was built in-house without the help of waterjets or state-of-the-art technology. A robot whose CAD had to be loaded onto a floppy disk to interface with the CNC mill. This robot had duct tape holding it's intake together, and though it had working auto-aiming on the practice field, it was never able to auto-aim on the competition field. This robot ran a slightly modified version of the AndyMark kit chassis. This robot went into the final day of Championships so badly broken that the team considered completely dropping out of the competition. This robot played it's way through all of eliminations with nothing holding its wheels together but hopes, dreams, and copious amounts of epoxy.

No this robot was not a third, second, or even first pick. It was an alliance captain. It was a robot with a big name, and nothing else going for it. A robot that seeded 36th at it's second regional, and was projected to rank 53rd in the Curie division. This robot was StuyPulse Team 694's 2016 robot: DEStiny.

As the President of Engineering for team 694, I never dreamed that we'd be able to make it to Einstein. During our last qualifications match, our center wheels sheered off of their pulleys, rendering us unable to cross most defenses. At this point, we considered quitting, but instead decided to give the competition one more last-ditch effort. We lathered some bolts in epoxy, jammed them into the spokes of our center wheels, and then through to the pulleys. To this day, the sponges that held the bolts in place while the epoxy set are still inside our wheels. I promised myself that, if we made it to Einstein, I would make this thread, so here we are.

I'm still kind of in shock about it, but I guess the moral of the story is to never give up.

P.S. Huge thanks to our alliance partners: team 3339, 379, and 1511 who helped us make it this far. We couldn't have dreamed of a better alliance.