How do you feel toward you robot?

[Rickertsen2]

How did you feel about this year's robot? What isn't finished? What are its strengths? Weeknesses?

Me.. Its my final year FIRST as a high school student and I feel a bit disappointed to tell you the truth. We decided to be 'weird' and go with a pneumatic shooter. It is DEAD ON accurate +- 6 inches at the most, but the ROF is approx only one per second due to our hopper design which was almost an afterthought. At one point we had 3 differnt people building three seperate designs.

The camera tracking works, but its too slow for my tastes. I never got the time to tune my PID loops. I have all the bits and pieces of autonomous working but nothing has been tried all together even once. Also, at the competition i am going to have to generate a table of shooter angles vs camera angle to target.

The drivetrain is your typical 4wd using the kit trannies and a pretty low ratio so nothing special there.

I feel like i have wasted the last 6 weeks of my life after seeing all the other robot pics. I suppose i should look on the bright side, It was an AWESOME journey to get here.

I was really excited about programming this year. I was finally going to have a chance to show off my stuff and mess wiht PID, vision systems etc on a FIRST robot. Well, since our other programmer graduated last year, found that up until 3 days before ship i was soo tied up with mechanical things that i did not write a single line of code. It all works(in theory ) but i fear we will not get our more than say 6 balls in auto.

I'm sure that all sounded rather rambly and disorganized. If other people feel positively about their robot i would love to hear their story. What is life like on other teams?

[Nuttyman54]

First off, just getting a moving, shooting robot is an accomplishment. Also, keep in mind people usually only post their robots on these forums if THEY feel it's a good robot. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there, maybe even some veteran teams, who feel exactly like you do. Have some pride!

Our original plan included a shooter, but we never completed it, and probably would be overweight if we had. right now we go for the corner goals, but the main accomplishment is the shifting transmission, which is the first one our team has ever built (to my knowledge). Overall, i feel we have a solid robot, but I'm dubious about our chances. I think it'll come down to being a good defense for us.

[Joe J.]

This has been my 4th year FIRST as a student. This build season has lived up to my expectations fairly well. We built our team's most complex robot to date, and we did it without a machine shop. This years bot is about 10 times more complex than last years and we managed to get it working before ship

Getting the robot done is a big accomplishment for any team.

My team likes to joke about our 2003 robot that couldn't run a match without blowing up a transmission (we refer to it as the worst FIRST robot ever) And our 2004 robot that went into the crate with a non working drive train that was too complex to fix, and plans to install a new one on practice day, even that one didn't work well.

[akshar]

from what i saw of our robot, regit 2... its a solid defensive botg but iw was built for offense, and we've worked out the kinks for tghat but i havn't seen it in action so im stgill confident that the bot is a solid Defense and most likely a great offense bot,

[TimCraig]

I'm pretty disappointed. We had a good plan and the execution was good until the last two weeks of the build and then it kind of fell apart. This is my 4th year mentoring a FIRST team and it's most likely my last.

[IraJason]

I'm from a rookie team, Dawgma Team 1712, so this is my rookie year in FIRST, and I am extremely proud of both my team and our robot. We stayed focused throughout the entire build season and had our robot finished a week ahead of time, allowing our programmers ample time to test code and for practice. We made a really simple robot that picks up balls and spits them out into the side goals, but it is really efficient at what it does and we are pleased to produce something that is fully functional.

FIRST has been a great exeprience for me. Seeing that little robot of ours going around after weeks of hard work has been well worth the time and effort.

[SpaceBoy2000]

Luke described it best: "What a piece of junk!"

Well, I think it'll rip itself apart in our first round. First, the motor mounts will go, since I kinda fudged them all together. Next, the hopper will collapse, and the electronics will melt into a smoking heap. Yes, I'm really surpised it's held itself together for so long. Or the fact that the picker upper roller thing works. Honestly, the measurements were winged ("Eh, this looks right"), the whole $@#$@#$@#$@# system was untested, and I was running off CAD drawings as soon as I thought of something.

Thank god I didn't touch the design of the cannon too much, at least one part of our robot might not blow up. And the drive system was rigged without me, so, I guess that should work too. Basically, if I had no connection to it, it'll be fine.

I hate how undermanned we are. Our robot's fat and overweight. Thank god we fed it cheese for the last few days, at least it's BARELY in the weight limit.

[Zoheb N]

i feel awesome about our robot...mostly cause it actually works and i spent many hours on it with barely and sleep and i think most of the other people feel the same way...

[Wolf103FM]

I'm feeling decent about ours this year, Our only problem is the shooter though so that is kinda giving me mixed feelings, wondering if we can get it working or not. Every year we've had something that doesn't work as planned, or at all, we never got the camera even hooked up. We didn't discover the shooter problem until Monday night before ship, becausre that was the first time we had actually tested it hooked up to the robot, so right then I was about ready to go outside and beat the ever living crap out of something. Buy hey, having fun and enjoying it is just as good as winning, and if you win, that's just an added bonus. We've still got a whole month until the trip (Palmetto) to think about how to get that thing working, so who knows, maybe our streak of having our main function not work right will be over this year, if not, there's still next year.

[sanddrag]

Hey everybody,

Whatever your robot looks like, be proud of it. Even if it isn't powder coated, anodized, and CNCed, YOU built it and YOU made it happen. YOU just gave up 6 weeks of your life for something you believed in, and no matter the outcome, that is something for anyone to be proud of. Even if your robot didn't turn out exactly as you thought it would, you have accomplished and learned more in the past six weeks than probably a majority of people in the country. Be proud of your machine. Don't kick it to the gutter. Stand behind it. Believe in it. Give it your all. Take pride in your robot.

[NoodleKnight]

How I feel? There's a LOT of room for improvement, haha.

But anyways, +1 to sanddrag's comment, I do like the robot which my team has created, even if it does have a long string of problems that will indefinetaly plague us during the competitions. =P

I love it but it could still be greatly improved!

[Koko Ed]

Unless your robot is a pile of part or you were jettisoned from your team (supposedly) unjustly who's gonna say they hate their robot?

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Unless your robot is a pile of part or you were jettisoned from your team (supposedly) unjustly who's gonna say they hate their robot?

I think there's a difference between not liking one's robot and not liking what a robot is doing. I loved Bob (our rookie robot), but it wasn't going to see a Saturday afternoon.

To answer the original post, though, I think I'm more confident than ever that our robot can really deliver. A big focus early in the season was on getting a good drivetrain, one that won't swerve around like Ockham or limp around the field like Bob. The 6WD setup, from the Kitbot, does wonders for this. The camera control doesn't hurt, either.

The shooter is still a bit up in the air. We tested it Monday night (the video is in the signature), and it seemed like it could stand a little more range. In addition, the hopper has a bit of a tendency to jam. We had some possible fixes before ship, so we'll be testing them on Thursday at Palmetto.

Regardless, this is our best one yet.

[Lkr220]

this is my rookie year in first and my teams second year.... i LOVE our robot this year...there are still a few kinks to work out but i still love it...even if it winds up that we cant fix everything i will still love our bot because we made it and its our baby.

as of ship day, as far as i know, our robot worked mechanically...but our programming is a little messed up....hopefully our programmers will pull through and make us even more proud of our baby but even if they dont its been a fun journey getting to where we are and we'll learn from our mistakes and make an even better bot next year!