QotW [11-09-03]: Buy 'em Fast

[JVN]

Allright, this week's QOTW has a brief story attached to it.

Clarkson University has a "low emission snowmobile team" as part of our SPEED program. Basically, this team buys a sled, and modifies it to be more environmentally friendly. The other day, we were standing around working on FIRST, and their team rolled in the brand new sled.

I think it was Eric who rolled his eyes and jokingly said: "We should get to buy a robot, and just tweak it, enough of this 'from scratch' stuff" (or something along those lines).

This statement made us all think.

Question of the Week 11-09-03:
If you could purchase ANY previous FIRST robot, which would you buy? (and for how much $$$?)
To use as a base for the 2004 season?
To study and reverse engineer?
Or for other purpose?
Let's hear it.



Of course this is a completely hypothetical exercise, we all know the real fun comes from designing and building our own robots!

[David Kelso]

Well, if you describe the 2004 contest a bit, it would make our decisions much easier.

[generalbrando]

I probably wouldn't buy any. I'd probably just take a close look at pictures and ask the teams questions. In some cases in the past, I've had enough pictures of several robots from a competition to reconstruct it from scratch.

Although I suppose I might buy some older models for sentimental reasons.

[Jon Reese]

i wuold bye last years robt from 111. it was an awsome robot and id pay lots of money for it.as much as they wanted.

[Jeremy_Mc]

I'd buy the Baxter robot from last year just so I could make the gearbox into a pet. And pet it. All day.


That thing rocked.

[Chris Hibner]

I would buy WildStang's 1997 robot. I swear that the gym at William Rainey Harper College didn't have a tall enough ceiling to contain that robot. It was amazing to see how high that robot could go.

[Joe Matt]

2003 Wildstang, hands down.

[Ken Leung]

If there is ANY robot I could buy, I would buy the drive base of the 2001 Chief Delphi 8 motors swerve base. That drive system is a monster! I would buy it to reverse engineer/study, AND see what can be done to make it better. That drive base deserve more than 6 weeks of work to be done on it.

The Kingman 2002 robot will be another top choice of mine. Excellent drive system with really high speed and strong pushing force because of the transmission. But the most impressive about that robot is its arms on top that's capable of lifting 2 goals of 180 lbs each at the same time. I would buy this robot and bring it to team 71's headquarter and see which robot can push harder.

[Ryan Albright]

i would buy 267's 2001 (i think that was the year with the balancing goals and big balls) That thing was abeast it could pick up the goals and place it on the teetertoter

[WakeZero]

Originally posted by Ken L
The Kingman 2002 robot will be another top choice of mine. Excellent drive system with really high speed and strong pushing force because of the transmission. But the most impressive about that robot is its arms on top that's capable of lifting 2 goals of 180 lbs each at the same time. I would buy this robot and bring it to team 71's headquarter and see which robot can push harder.

You know, I still have video footage of the 2002 semi-finals when these two monsters battled it out. I will see what I can do to get it digitized for you

[Rpifirst]

It has often been asked by people at demonstrations "how much would you sell that robot for." We have always responded with the amount of blood sweat and tears we put into the thing about 50k. However Id never spend that much on a bot id build it myself. However the questions was who's robot id buy. Well id go for 217 in 2002 for the cct 190 in 2002 and 2003 for cvt and ins. also id go for 111 and 45 2003. This way id have some awesome examples of drive lines and autonomous features so I could have one hella cool drive line to build some kind of arm on.

[Cory]

2002, Team 60, hands down

[David Kelly]

The Beatty Beast (71) from 2001. The world's first 710 match at the Midwest Regional will say it all.


http://www2.wildstang.org/2001/video/



Domination.

Originally posted by Ken L
If there is ANY robot I could buy, I would buy the drive base of the 2001 Chief Delphi 8 motors swerve base. That drive system is a monster! I would buy it to reverse engineer/study, AND see what can be done to make it better. That drive base deserve more than 6 weeks of work to be done on it.

2001 or 2000?


I would go for their 2000 bot. That thing was a total monster. Im pretty sure that they would have won it all if it wasn't for a little malfunction during the elimination rounds at nationals that year. All I can remember is that it was my rookie year and at both regionals I went to, that evil CD bot was facing us in the finals at GLR. We had match 3 (my memory is a bit fuzzy im not sure if it was 2 or 3) in the bag, until CD came over to our goal, stuck their ball storage device in their and sucked out quite a few of our balls, swerved over and put them in their goal. Unbelievable. At the Motorola Midwest Regional a few weeks later, we were fortunate enough to be with them instead of against them, along with Wildstang. The Chief Delphi bot of 2000 is probably the one bot I would kill to get my hands on.

[Ken Leung]

Originally posted by D.J. Fluck
2001 or 2000?

The CD 2000 bot is my favorite robot for that year's competition. No question about that. But in terms of the drive system, I would rather buy the 2001 8 motor swerve drive and not the 2000 4 motor swerve + caster.

Of course if I have the money I would buy both. They are both great examples of how cool FIRST robots can be.