Robotics Competition Stories!!

[jburstein]

LA regional this year- we're coming down the ram with our arm raised when a wedge shaped robot runs into us head on. Our driver made the mistake of continuing forward, and because our arm was raised and we were on the ramp we tipped over onto our arm. Fortunately we designed for this contingency, so our arm is hinged from the side of the robot it has sufficient toruqe to put us back on our wheels. And it did just that, even though we were flat on our back, wheels pointing directly upwards, our chassis cranked itself right back up and as it passsed vertical it fell onto the wheels.

What we didn't know until after the match was that our battery had come out of its mount, for most teams this would mean that the battery would be disconnected as soon as they moved, but we were able to finish the match dragging our battery along behind us by its leads because we had a zip-tied the two connectors together. In the video we took you can even see that another robot drove over our battery at one point. It was crazy cool, but not very good for the robot, because the battery smashed the plastic housing of one of our drill motors as it bounced around underneath our robot at one point.

Needless to say, after that we abandoned the practice of using velcro to hold the battery in, building a new mount in the ten or so minutes before the next match.