Most inspirational bots for you

[ConKbot of Doom]

Since going to the different regionals, what robots have you all seen that made you say wow, and just wish you could do something like that?

Personally I loved 1027 at the Chesapeake regional. Their bot was so quick, but precise, the telescoping arm was very smooth moving and quick. They had a fixed tetra manipulator that was very effective. It had a very nice appearance. It just made me say wow.

[Mike Schroeder]

any robot team 111 has made with a swerve drive
i still try to coinvince my team that a swerve drive is a good idea.

I could stare at wildstangs robot for hours if i had the chance

[JoeXIII'007]

Team 85's robot is very unusual unlike most others I've seen. I believe they're the ones with 2 screws as manipulators. It's pretty insane.

Inspiration it gives: to use more imagination in the design process.

[Billfred]

All discussion of inspirational robots, IMHO, has to start with 1396's One-Day Wonder.

It takes something as bad as a team being robotless at the championship to remind everyone what FIRST is about.

[George A.]

The Beast from Zone Zeal. You may not have liked the game but this bot kicked butt. To see teams spend all this money on expensive metals and lose, and then to see 71 with their PVC bot and literally walk down the feild is amazing.

[Rick TYler]

My second-favorite robot this year was from team 1441 in Bellevue, Washington, from the Forest Ridge School. Their whole team was four girls and a mentor who had very little experience. Their team was founded last year by a mentor with an engineering background who had to move out of state before the season started. Rather than folding their team, this small Catholic girl's school decided to continue with one very inexperienced mentor. Their bot had no arm, and was made out the kitbot chassis with 2x4 lumber and plywood nailed on. They could carry a tetra on top, which they slid off by stopping abruptly at a goal. They had traction problems (their wheels spun continuously) because they didn't have enough programming background to reduce the power output to the wheels.

I met them when I gave them some plywood to make number panels, and later when we upgraded their software to release 10 and loaded the current version of the default driving software. I saw other teams helping throughout the event, too. They gave me some of their team pencils... They were an especially nice group, too, who were very grateful for the help

Their courage in showing up and doing their best with their BLT made their's my most inspirational robot. Ironically, good partnerships meant that they finished the qualification rounds ranked 18th out 37. They were picked 24th for the elimination rounds as part of the 8th seeded alliance. Most of us thought they were picked for recognition of their courage.

My first-favorite robot was the one our team built, of course.

[Kyle Love]

I really liked the looks of 1525's arm...very nice looking! They will be a force to be reckoned with in the future!

[Arefin Bari]

Personally I like Team 233's (Think Pink) robot this year. That beast is very well engineered and very effective at competition. Another robot that I really liked was team 179's (Children of the Swamp). A very fast (14 fps), effective robot that teamed up with team 233 at Florida regional and made the alliance almost unstoppable.

Team 79 (The Navigators) looked very effective at Midwest Regional. Team 71's huge pvc arm was cool. Team 237's (Sie-H2O-Bots) 6 wheel drive base with the cool looking arm worked very effectively throughout NJ regional both during autonomous mode and driver's control.

... at last I am really proud of my own team's (SigmaC@T 108) robot just because of the fact that the whole robot is student engineered. It is just awesome to see the robot that you worked on to go out there in the field and give the opponents a good competition.

[thoughtful]

Untill now team 40 sticks out in my mind. Thier robot was solid, very manuverable and very effective. They capped about an average of 6 tetras in the play-offs. They were a beauty.

[Koko Ed]

Team 1450's robot in their first season last year. It was very simple, didn't do much and never won any awards but it was the personification of what FIRST is all about. They didn't even have a team until the week of January 17th and had to bust their behinds to build a functioning robot in a shorter peroid of time with 5 students and 4 adults (and I don't think they had a mechanical engineer amongst them). Sure it's great to see dominant robots that cut a swath through every team that crosses their path or has really cool features (I absolutly love 279's robots the last 2 years) but give me smaller new programs who are just happy to create a functioning robot from scratch without a large budget and an amazing staff of genius engineers at hand. Those teams are truly the heart and soul of FIRST even if they aren't making the trip to the podium 3 to 5 times a season.