What to do with old robots?

[Barry Bonzack]

I don't want to make this sound like I want another school's bot donated to my team, but if other teams have no use for other bots, and are dismantling them, taking them apart, and selling them for scrap anyway (or chunking them with a pumpkin launcher) what about finding a rookie team in the near-by area that does not have any old robots of their own to practice with? They most likely will have extra space, and would love to see what a great bot would look like after the 6 weeks. At least the donating team will know their robot they worked so hard on is still in one piece, and they can have the satisfaction of helping a rookie team...Just an idea.

[Bcahn836]

Great Idea!!!

[KenWittlief]

Ive found its really hard to get any meaningfull pratice with last years, or a previous years robot

for one thing, they often have a very short 'mean-time between failure' rate - you drive it for 10 minutes then spend an hour fixing something

it would be better to take the RC and build a simple practice bot - something with a basic 2 wheel drivetrain and simple frame, that will run on one battery for an hour or more, and wont load up the motors so they cook in 4 minutes.

search on 'practice' and maybe 'frank' and the one we made this year should show up in here somewhere, with photos

[Jeff Waegelin]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

Ive found its really hard to get any meaningfull pratice with last years, or a previous years robot

for one thing, they often have a very short 'mean-time between failure' rate - you drive it for 10 minutes then spend an hour fixing something

it would be better to take the RC and build a simple practice bot - something with a basic 2 wheel drivetrain and simple frame, that will run on one battery for an hour or more, and wont load up the motors so they cook in 4 minutes.

search on 'practice' and maybe 'frank' and the one we made this year should show up in here somewhere, with photos

That's interesting. We still run our 2002 robot for practice, and we've only had one problem (old firmware on the controller that didn't like autonomous mode) in all the time we've used it for testing. That robot just doesn't quit. We've run it through 4 competitions in 2002, several weeks of autonomous testing in 2003, and countless demos at local schools all without a hitch. It's probably the most solid, reliable machine we've ever built. I guess it all depends on the robot, and how reliable and robustly it was built.

[Joe J.]

Out of the five robots our team has had (2 from 465 3 from 862) we only have two that still run. Both the 2000 robot and 2001 robot have been stripped down to their welded frames and those are sitting on top of our storage unit at Visteon. The 2002 robot is basicly a driving frame and is sitting in our teacher class room so we drive it around the hallways.The 2003 robot is completly dissasembled. And the 2004 bot is on display at Visteon.

[Joe Matt]

We have 1.0-5.0 sitting on the 2003 king of the hill parts in our lab. All of them run to a degree, expect 3.0. The frame of 3.0 has warped too much. Also, we are trying to get 1.0 up and running better. We used 2.0 this year for practace for the arm/driver cordanation. 4.0 made quite a few appearences, such as with Gov. Warner & at a local Chick-fil-a. 5.0 has made an appearence at a local elementary school, and mabey a hospital soon.

[Bernie]

at MOE we use three of our bots, including this year's, for demonstrations to promote FIRST, we take them to the several schools that we have students in and at events we hold. we also visit various science or academic events to show them. two of the older bots have been dissembled though, they were too big for demonstration.

we do use them for driving practice and for ideas, but their main purpose for being around is to expand FIRST.

[Bcahn836]

Today I started taking apart our first robot from 2002. I am putting the componets from the robot and putting them into one of those blue rubber maid containers from the 2003 game. And labeling the box "SPARE PARTS". And all scrap metal is being recycled. This years robot is going to be used for demo, and off season competitions.
One robot down two to go. LOL

[nparikh]

Well, our team, 25, has been involved with F.I.R.S.T. for many years. We have a lot of old robots and we keep them in a store-room in our school, that is dedicated for the use of our team. We still take out the robots every so often to play with them, practice driving, and keep them in shape...

[Bcahn836]

Originally Posted by Bcahn836

Today I started taking apart our first robot from 2002. I am putting the componets from the robot and putting them into one of those blue rubber maid containers from the 2003 game. And labeling the box "SPARE PARTS". And all scrap metal is being recycled. This years robot is going to be used for demo, and off season competitions.
One robot down two to go. LOL

Just to clairify; we are only "scraping" aluminum, like the frame, base plate, and supports. All other useable componets will be kept.

[crazyone]

Well, our 1999 bot ended up as a star in local play and the other bots remian in semi-tac with peices missing like motors, but they mostly stay together for training and design referencing ie "like we did on the 2002 robot".

[biffy96]

this is are 2 year,list year bot is this year cart. we paint it and tako out the old thing and put new thing

[Bernie]

ahhhhhhhhhh, the confusing-ness. SO MUCH ANTI-GRAMMAR"anti-grammar is now a word". so someone made something using something, somewhere while you painted it, eh? that was rhetorical.

[Goobergunch]

Given that our 2003 robot was just barely functional, we scavenged what we could (which wasn't much, especially after we explained to our mentor that it was against the rules to re-use parts) and then put the remains of the frame in the small room behind the physics room in which we store everything Friarbot-related.

We'll probably (and hopefully) keep our 2004 robot in better shape. For one thing, it still works.