2004 Survey

[Paul H]

1)Team Name: Killer Bees

2)Team Number: 33

3)How many people on the team? 30

4)How many guys? 25

5)How Many girls? 5

6)What does everyone do? There are 3 groups, CAD, PR, and Build


Design Questions
1) How long does it take to design various things on your robot (hours, days) We design it all throughout the build period, but the preliminary design work takes about a week.

2) Do you prototype first? Yes

3) How many people design things? There are 3 goups, each with an adult mentor that "guides" the students, but everyone has a say. This year the groups were chassis, Ball-O-Fier, and hanging arm (which never went on). Last year they were Chassis, Box Manipulator Claw, and Arm.

4) How many people build things? Every student on the build team, which is about 20. Our robot is pretty much entirely student built.

5) How many hours a day do people put in towards the robot? Every team member is required to be at all meetings, which is about 16 hours per week. Some people like myself go more during crunch time.

6) Do you get professional engineers to help your team, or is it all teachers and students? Engineers


Strategy Questions

1) How much experience do your drivers have? (years) This year and all of the offseason events last year

2) How much experience did your drivers get with the robot? 3 weeks for the chassis, a few days with most of the robot, no time with the actual competition configuration. Thereforem the driver had a lot of practice, the operator (me) had to figure it all out at the competition.

3) Do you design to do everything well, or do you design to do one specific task extraordinarily?
Last year we tried to do everything well and we weren't so great, so this year we focused on ball handling and hanging. We were awesome at both, but we had to sacrafice the good hanging arm for something that was so-so. The other year we were REALLY good, 2001, we did one thing well, which was handling goals. Although we did everything in 2002 and won a regional. I guess it all depends on the game. I'll stop, I'm rambling.

4) Do you have a very special thing on your robot, some cool design or whatnot? and If so what is it. Please describe it.
4 speed automatic transmission that weighs about 2 pounds, pop down casters converting it to 2wd for turning on a dime, Stepping Chassis, Pop out ball ingestion system, it's all special!

5) How much work did you put into the autonomous mode? We measured the wheel counts during build season and that's it. All of the autonomous coding was done after shipping, and it all works. That's all Jim (DaimlerChrysler programmer/engineer) and Kevin (prodigy) right there, they're awesome

6) What does your autonomous do? Knock down the first, second, or both balls then reverse or drive under the ball dump


Other information
Speed (fps) 12 in high, about 6 in low

Robustness (1-10) 9.5

Agility (1-10) 10 due to the pop down castors in the back making it 2wd.


During the competition, did you feel that your alliance partner let your team down in some way? Which competition?

Did you let your alliance partner down in any way? At nationals I feel we did a bit, and at Detroit we definately did by having our drive fail.

Where were you seeded before the finals round started (at the end of the qualification matches?)
VCU: 4th
Detroit: 3rd
Canada: 17th?
Archimedes: 5th

Did you win any awards during the competition (spirit, leadership in control, etc.?)
NASA/VCU Regional:
-Champions
-Xerox Creativity award
Detroit Regional:
-Leadership in Controls award
Canada Regional:
-Champions
-Driving tomorrow's technology award
-Industrial Design award
National Championship:
-Driving tomorrow's technology award

Personal Info

What is your name? Paul Huston

Age? 18

How long have you been on the team? this was my second year

What was your role on the team? Build: Ball-O-Fier team, pneumatics guy, and operator

That was fun!

[Billfred]

1)Team Name: d5robotics

2)Team Number 1293

3)How many people on the team? 30ish

4)How many guys? 27ish

5)How Many girls? 3

6)What does everyone do? Everything--this particular year, we weren't too particularly organized, although we had more build-oriented people and fundraising-oriented people.

Design Questions
1) How long does it take to design various things on your robot (hours, days) We usually haggle over it for a few hours, maybe over a day or two, before it hits.

2) Do you prototype first? Not this year.

3) How many people design things? I recall at least ten warm bodies designing this or that.

4) How many people build things? Nearly everyone built something--more of the building fell onto about five or six folks.

5) How many hours a day do people put in towards the robot? Two hours on a Tuesday night, plus all day saturday--about ten hours a week this year.

6) Do you get professional engineers to help your team, or is it all teachers and students? We've got two.

Strategy Questions

1) How much experience do your drivers have? (years) 0

2) How much experience did your drivers get with the robot? Functionally 0.

3) Do you design to do everything well, or do you design to do one specific task extraordinarily? One task extraordinarily--or so we thought.

4) Do you have a very special thing on your robot, some cool design or whatnot? and If so what is it. Please describe it. If I was fond of one thing on our robot, it would be our numbers. The Thursday at Palmetto, our fundraising/artsy coach didn't have the numbers that we'd done up all nice-like. So we did them in electrical tape. And it worked.

5) How much work did you put into the autonomous mode? Enough to get it just shy of hitting the ball.

6) What does your autonomous do? Get to the ten-point ball--whether it hits or not tends to be an issue of aim.


Other information
Speed (fps) Slow--like four to six. (We had window motors.)

Robustness (1-10) (10 being highest) 11. We were taking some serious checks in the sides from other robots, and we didn't have a ding.

Agility (1-10) 7. We couldn't screech out of somewhere, but we could move.

During the competition, did you feel that your alliance partner let your team down in some way? Not that I saw.

Did you let your alliance partner down in any way? We rocked as hard as we could--there was little to nothing else we could've done during the regional.

Where were you seeded before the finals round started (at the end of the qualification matches?) 27/42

Did you win any awards during the competition (spirit, leadership in control, etc.?) None.

Personal Info

What is your name? William Leverette

Age? 18, 17 during the season.

How long have you been on the team? 1 year

What was your role on the team? Miscellaneous student, fumble-through-the-dark scout, robot tackling dummy, occasional fabricator, and off-season pesterer.

[edflyerssn007]

Thanks for participating. As soon as possible I will set up a website with the results of my research. Forward this to your friends also, so that the sample population will be large enough and therefore more relevant to FIRST as a whole