2006 NASA/VCU Regional!

[Craig1989]

Originally Posted by bombadier337

They were told if they used it again they would be disqualified (can't confirm that's true, though I know for a fact they argued it through inspections).

That isn't actually true, while there was naturally some controversy over the issue, the inspectors, judges and refs all read the rules carefully and confirmed the suction cup was legal.

As far as the "120 pound suction cup" that was how much it can hold when suspended vertically, not the weight of it. <- Just thought I would clear that up.

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Now anyway here is our story in short:

We are a very small team, with only 1 mentor and 3 or 4 active team participants, we also do not have the money to purchase expensive parts or employ external help on our robot. All of the work you see on our robot was preformed by a group of 4 people with a budget of around 500$. Previous years we have worked very hard on creating an effective offensive robot, however, to put things short we have just been outclassed. We were very proud of our robot last year however when we arrived our alliance partners just wanted us to play defense, and let their laser guided (exaggeration) arms work on the offense.

After last years experience we decided to try and create a competitive robot, knowing full well there was no way we could compete with all the other teams in offense we created a strong defensive robot. To stop any confusions here is what our robot had:

- Pneumatic Brake powered by 2 cylinders that lifted our robot of the ground.
- Pneumatic Bumper that extended to slowly push other robots out the way
- Suction Cup to suck onto other robots flat panels, (while a nice scare factor it was very hard to use in practice)
- Suction Cup on underside of break for sucking to the slipping ramp surface.

While the bumper on the front was used mainly for defense it could also be used to push balls into the bottom goals.

We in no way intended our robot to be 'cheap' or 'unsportsmanlike' or 'against the first way' we just simply wanted to create a robot that was competitive using the small resources we had available to ourselves. We studied the Aim High game very carefully and discovered that being defensive would work very well in this game (which it did placing 19/64 teams). We did however compensate by recruiting a successful human player who could make 7 out of 10 shots in the bottom goals.

As far as the quarter finals went we got midlocanics to help with our autonomous programming, (thanks guys), unfortunately we hit the wall so fast that it dented our rear break into the right wheel, prohibiting any movement on that side. Hence the circles in the first round.

Hopefully I have cleared everything up, feel free to ask anymore questions if you have them.

Craig

Team Driver.