were there robot related injuries on your team?

[Noah]

Okay, so, Imagine that on one side of the Venice High Autoshop yard, about eight people are building this cool ramp that a robot is supposed to go up. Now imagine that on the other side of the yard, a certain programmer (cough cough ME) is testing an autonomous routine. Now visualize this robot (Which is from 2002 and therefor has a harpoon on the front to grab goals with) flys forward at top speed and executes a flawless right turn. The programming team rejoices! The people standing on top of a bridge that has yet to be held together and collapses with them on top of it, however....


Additionally, we learned that when you don't initialize PWM outputs, they default to zero. Zero, by coincidence, is FULL REVERSE. Engineers don't like getting hit in the shins by a 120 lb robot that was turned on only to go flying towards them in FULL REVERSE.

Ok...anyone else have someone DROP your team's robot on you? I was trying out for comp. team, I think, last year and as a requirement you had to lift our robot. Well...Joe S. and I are lifting this thing fine until he doesn't give me a cue to lift and proceeds to go on without me. Nonetheless, the robot tips and I get a wire brush cleany thing (I forget what they were but this was on MOEHawk and we used them to stay attached to the floor) in the face/top of my head. OW! It hurt but I'm a girl and it was all guys so I sucked it up and acted as if nothing had happened.

As far as accidents go however...none have really occured to our team however....there was the elevator incident. *smirks*

Some of you might know this story, because someone must have posted it last year, but anyway....we were at Nationals in Huston in a hotel I thought was...well...old. Too old. The elevators scared me but who cared...we were having fun. It was a little over curfew when all of sudden I hear a lot of noise from the hallway. Out I go...walk a few steps and blink. My team is crowded around the elvator doors...close elvator doors. Oook...they've all lost it. Then I hear what I had to die laughing at...my mentors are stuck inside, pounding on the door to the rest of us outside. It was great. They were stuck in there for twenty minutes I think. They even tried prying the doors open which was...well...odd. No injuries occured but...wow....there could have been!

Also, I think one of our students, Chris, ended up smacking his head in the shower really badly when a couple other students squirted him. I forget exactly how that happened though.

[SaxMan701]

Yeah, minor scrapes and cuts and such.

At the Claverack meeting (local energy company, we always have a booth at their anual meeting) (some 222 people were there, but I don't think they heard about this), Sean was driving Chuck V around for everyone to look at, and he wanted to give me a hug with it. Now, it's not that easy to control how much the arms sqeeze, so I was walking away from it backwards. I eventually hit a picnic table, so I was down on that. Sean kept driving the bot closer to me, and the corner of some metal plate on the bottom of it scraped my leg. It was a thin cut, but about 3 inches long. It bled a lot.

Funny thing is that earlier that day, Rob threw a ball at the bot and it popped and was destroyed. I found out it was the same corner or a metal plate.

[Allison K]

Not a robot injury, but a funny hotel one

At he buckeye regional on friday night, a few of us were hanging out in one of the rooms watching a movie and generally goofing around. Well one kid on our team, Bat Boy, (well quite a few, but he was being particularily annoying that night) was talking and being generally annoying, so our driver (who is about double the size of the talker) decided to jokingly throw him out of the room and close the door. Unknown to Bat Boy, our driver then backed up so he could get back in, however Bat Boy ran and threw his entire weight into the door, which then slammed into our drivers forehead, leaving a huge gash right above his eye. He probably should have gone to get stitches and it was bleeding everywhere, but he didnt want to be at the hospital till 3 am cause he had to drive the next day so they just butterflyed it.

We still make fun of Bat Boy about that

Allison

Heh this one is kinda funny.


A few weeks ago at Ford Sweet Repeat I was training one of the rookie kids. He pretty much got everything down early and eventually he was able to reset the robot between matches like the veteran pit crew. Although late in the day he was changing batteries when someone flipped the 120amp breaker switch on. He had one side of the battery disconnected completely and the other was still barely touching. Somehow (Im still not sure how) one of his fingers closed the open circuit and he got zapped. Luckily it wasn't bad though. I still can hear to this day what he said after that happened. Something like "Oh <profanities>!!!"

Originally posted by Allison K
Not a robot injury, but a funny hotel one

At he buckeye regional on friday night, a few of us were hanging out in one of the rooms watching a movie and generally goofing around. Well one kid on our team, Bat Boy, (well quite a few, but he was being particularily annoying that night) was talking and being generally annoying, so our driver (who is about double the size of the talker) decided to jokingly throw him out of the room and close the door. Unknown to Bat Boy, our driver then backed up so he could get back in, however Bat Boy ran and threw his entire weight into the door, which then slammed into our drivers forehead, leaving a huge gash right above his eye. He probably should have gone to get stitches and it was bleeding everywhere, but he didnt want to be at the hospital till 3 am cause he had to drive the next day so they just butterflyed it.

We still make fun of Bat Boy about that

Allison

Allison, OMG! That's too funny! I think something similuar happened with the whole Chris incident.

Oh...yes...only recently Chris, the same one thrown into the bathtub, had to have his hair cut using *I think* wire cutters. I'm not sure how if got that but a rather large peice of duct tape was stuck on Chris hair and to itself. A few members tried to remove it but it was impossible so we ended up cutting it off. Fun times...fun times.

Oh yes...Ask Steven on our team what happens when you anger a girl on your team who has sharp nails. Heh. Steven went home alot of nights with cuts across his arm cause "someone" scratched the daylights out of him for being generally annoying.

[kevin.li.rit]

Our robot hasn't injured anyone on the team, but it did run over someone.

[Stephanie]

hmm... during the 2003 season my finger was nearly removed when the miter saw malfunctioned while i was cutting extrusion for the robot frame.
that saw was no good. that happened two or three times before it happened to me. i was just the first to get hurt. i have a nice scar from it, as well as the offending bit of extrusion. unfortunately, no one thought to take a picture just after it happened, so i have no gory photos to show :/
<edit> in 2002, our robot took it upon itself to start driving after our programmer uploaded the new program. the ball basket also fell, and hit a team member on the bridge of the nose, causing it to bleed </edit>

[Vincent Chan]

Paul Luffel was cutting some Lexan or simliar material (I don't recall exactly what it was,) last year with a Dremel. He ended up somehow putting the Dremel in his finger, cutting a 1/8-inch or so deep groove into it, and cauterizing the wound with the friction of the cutting disk. It was actually kind of cool, though it's not an experience I'd like to go through.

Three of us got stabbed by a hot soddering iron last year.

The only ROBOT-inflicted injury I can remember is one of our alumni tightenining down the nut on the frame of our bot, and the piston from the pneumatics slammed down pretty much on top of the nut. Someone, not paying attention, released the solenoid and squished his finger. It wasn't broken or anything, luckily.

[fox46]

Over the course of the build period, some of the metal on the robot will end up in you, and some of your skin will end up on the robot!

Two years ago, (zone zeal competition) our robot had a 50lb hopper that it would fill with balls, and then the hopper would get raised to the top of a goal, and then the balls would get dumped in. The hopper was lifted via scissor lift. SCISSOR lift! We were nearing the shipping deadline, and things were getting pretty crazy. I was installing some lock collars on the leadscrew mechanism that actuated the scissor lift. At the same time, another member was removing the pins that joined the scissors to the leadscrew so he could work on the hopper (which was 6ft up in the air at the time). I had told him to make sure to block up the hopper before he removed the pins, but unfortunately for me, he forgot. All of a sudden, I hear "holy %&*#" the robot jerks, and I realise that the hopper is decending VERY quickly, so I attempted to pull my arm out from between the lower pair of scissors, but I wasn't fast enough, and my pinky finger got caught between two scissor sections. I don't really remeber much except for white hot pain, and I think I said a few things made up mostly of four letter words! After I finished screaming, I looked at my finger, and it was like one of those bugs bunny cartoons- the tip was almost completely flat and bleeding alot! I ended up at the hospital, but amazingly, I didn't need stitches or anything, the finger was just really crushed, and after a few days, it "re-inflated" back to normal, minus a pair of deep gashes. I still have the scars, and the nail still looks a little wierd.

[BandChick]

i do believe while we were having driver training someone almost ran over mr. gregory (our advisor), but other than that i can't remember any REAL injuries. i did cut my hand open on a rough piece of metal, but i don't really count that.

we did slam into a pole in our annex and leave some black tire marks on the carpet though

[kevin.li.rit]

Yes, well our Robot Actually Ran over someone, up and over.

[Smrtman5]

My team and I were fooling around with the bot, practicing driving it around and scaring people in the halls. So i got the bright idea to ride it. I crouched on top and it sped off. Then the driver gets the bright idea to drive forward and back really quickly to try to throw me off. It almost worked, but i stayed on.... till i looked back at him. He then proceeded to gun it, placing me firmily on my back. Billy claims to have heard the thud.

At least he didnt back up over me lol.

Almost forgot.. no story time is complete without Jimmy! Freshman year he cut off his thumb. Entirly...severed. I wasnt there to see it but i bet it wasnt fun. He got it reattached, but we used to tease him about his 'bionic thumb'

Such a loving group we are.

[Specialagentjim]

who remembers post-qualifying-rounds at epcot years ago?? Remember when we'd all drag our robots with people standing on them!! that was good times!

[Elgin Clock]

In houston this year we participated in Robot Cart Pulls outside after closing ceremonies.. good times!! lol What you would do is hook up your robot to your team's cart and pull or push yourself down the "raceway" and see who was fastest..

It was awesome after a hard weekend of competing!!

No injuries that I know of came from that... lol