What do you do with a robot at the end of the season?

[EricH]

We've got shells of '11, '12, '14, '15, and a pair of '16 robots (one competition, one practice). '14 and '15 could probably be operational within a weekend with some scavenging from the shopbot frames (drivebases used for offseason projects). '12 was a demo bot up until a couple years ago, but no longer functions.

I've got a funny feeling that '16 will be around for a while, though.

[orangemoore]

We disassemble our robots usually for parts.

Originally Posted by EricH

We've got shells of '11, '12, '14, '15, and a pair of '16 robots (one competition, one practice). '14 and '15 could probably be operational within a weekend with some scavenging from the shopbot frames (drivebases used for offseason projects). '12 was a demo bot up until a couple years ago, but no longer functions.

I've got a funny feeling that '16 will be around for a while, though.

I wonder why...

[EliseCH]

Demos, fundraising and driver's practice.
Robots are the perfect visual aid for getting students excited about STEM, fundraising and keeping our students excited about robots when they get to drive them!

We keep those that are good for demos. 2013 and 2016 are great demo robots because they fit in more vehicles and play nice. 2014 fits in the mini-vans and likes to play ball with kids.

2016 already did one demo and the kids had a great time playing ball with her. We will also visit some sponsors and do some fundraising with her soon. She is in maintenance to handle the rigors of demos, but will remain mostly the same until after the off-season events in the Fall and then become a dedicated demo robot.

2015 did not fit easily in vehicles and no one was fond of him, he was cannibalized for parts for our practice bot this year.

We don't have a lot of space and are currently working on a new home for 2012. And, we will finally dissemble 2010 this summer, because he lost his home.

[scott.smith]

We keep the recent robots we like (2010, 2014) for quite a bit of time, and sometimes convert them to a practice robot for a season (We used our 2010 robot to help our drivers train this year while our robot was being built) The robots we do not like (2015, 2009) we immediately disassemble after our last off-season event. This years robot is going to stay for a while.

[sanddrag]

We have all 15 years of them, including the 2013 twins, the 2014 twins, and the 2016 twins. So I think that makes for 18 robots. We had twins in 2006 and 2007 but those practice bots have since been disassembled. 2015 was the tipping point where we really had to make some changes to our storage space. We now have our two 2016 robots lingering about in the lab, because they do not yet have any permanent home.

For the teams that have been around as long as we have and have kept them all, what do you do with them?

In the Fall, we're hoping to begin refurbishing ours back to functional status starting with the newest and working our way back.

[mathking]

We don't have space to keep a lot of robots around. This one, and our 2013 robot, will likely stay assembled for a while. They are both good demonstration (or kickball) robots. And both are transportable in smaller vehicles. (I have fit them in my wife's Mitsubishi Mirage. I would love to have the space to keep all of them together. I have seen 1629's beautiful build space with their old robots on display. Very cool.

[Green Potato]

Due to build space being at a premium, we've only kept intact our 2013 and 2016 bots. The 2016 bot and its twin are likely going to be kept around for off-season events or projects, and the 2013 bot is the show-off bot we bring to events, fundraisers, etc.

Many of the more recent challenges, 2013 and 2016 especially, have produced a lot of kid-friendly robots, and I've heard a lot of teams on this thread express that the 2016 bot is likely to be kept for a while. Not a surprise that 2015 bots aren't kept at as high a clip... even though I've seen many awesome RR bots, they're much more difficult to transport, and watching a bot shoot Frisbees, basketballs, etc. generally attracts more kids than watching a bot stack totes.