Robot Storage Time Limit

[Jherbie53]

This is to officially start a thread about how long you store your robot, and is an offshoot from the thread about Robot Ethics. This is different from How Many Robots Does Your Team Keep, there it talks about how many you keep. I want to know if you don't have room for more than 3-4 robots, when do you "breakdown" the robots. Also do you keep a robot that has had a great season and never do anything to it or just until you run out of room for it.

I know there are teams that store all of their past robots, which I think a lot of teams really wish they could. But then there are teams like mine, where last years robot only survives until after the next season is over and we turn our attention to the new robot. Then during the fall we dismantle the robot and reuse what we can from it.

Anyhoo, when should a robot be "broken down", when you don't have the space to store it? Thats my question.

[Greg Needel]

i will speak for the teams i know...

team 73 had all of the old robots, but now all but 2-3 still exist

768 has every robot except the rookie bot in 2002 which was vandalized during the summer of 2002

team 1511 has both of their bots

team 131 has 7 of their bots but typically after a few years gives them to students who were on the team during that year. Dave Kelso's garage is only so big.


I know that 191 has every robot built since 1992, although the 1992 bot currently resides in FIRST place in Manchester, while the rest are in Rochester NY.

[Joe Matt]

384 has all of our bots, but i think the first one to be deconstructed would be the one that is in the worst shape, either 1.0 or 3.0.

[Cory]

we have our 2001 through 2006 bots.

We had the shell of the 2000 bot until recently, but tossed it to reclaim space.

[Rohith Surampudi]

we have kept as many of our robots as we could, but our oldest robot that we still have i believe is from 98, so we have 2 bots that are scrapped . Its nice to keep old robots as portals to the past, they have a sort of Nostalgic value, you look back at 6 weeks of hard work, and you remember all the time you spent on it, and your competitions. My advice is, Keep them as long as you can.

[RoboMadi]

Robot is just a machine. We, the FIRSTers, use it as a tool to learn a lot more than just building a robot.

But coming back to the actual point, my team dismantle the robots to learn more out of it. For example, fixing CMU cameras, making a pneumatic knight, building a basketball launcher or etc.
I'm proud to say that our 2005 robot was actually dismantled to help a disable kid with his mobility.

[Jherbie53]

Originally Posted by RoboMadi

I'm proud to say that our 2005 robot was actually dismantled to help a disable kid with his mobility.

My team did that with one of our robots, I can't remember what year. This was before I joined the team, and is one or our more rewarding uses of a robot.

[David55]

Originally Posted by RoboMadi

I'm proud to say that our 2005 robot was actually dismantled to help a disable kid with his mobility.

I saw the video, that was a really nice thing you did. A great example of channeling all your knowledge and experience to helping society.


Our team dismantled the chassis and electronics off our 2005 robot. The structure and arm are still intact.
I'm pretty sure we will keep our 2006 robot complete, at least for the next few years.

[Donut]

We always keep the past 2 years robots together. Once this season ended, for example, we dismantled the 2004 robot leaving us with 2005 and 2006 to hold on to. How well a past robot performed does not allow it to live longer for us (if one of them eventually wins a Regional or something, that might change), evident by 2004 disappearing since it was our best robot (made it to the finals at AZ).

Even if room is scarce, always try to keep at least one robot together at all times (this means that even when you've shipped a robot after the 6 weeks, you don't take apart the previous year's until that robot returns for good, so you still have one robot with your team at all times). Beyond that it is a decision largely influenced by available space, though a few other factors could contribute as well (for example, we might dismantle older robots even if we had the space for them simply because we've had a tradition of giving graduating seniors a part of the robot from their rookie year as a memoir, and that wouldn't be possible if we never took anything from the robots).

If your team is one of those that dismantles robots, make sure you have LOTS of pictures of those robots. The only thing I regret about our 2001 and 2002 robots being dismantled is that we don't have very many pictures of them to see how they worked if we ever want to take a design from them.

[Pat McCarthy]

We have a very large storage area at our disposal, and we are going to be keeping all of the robots for the foreseeable future. However, that wasn't always the case, and our 1997-1999 robots were completely dismantled.

I hear the the 1999 frame is still around somewhere, but I've never seen it.
We have the shell of the 2000, but no controller or other electronics.
The 2001 bot is also very stripped out, controls and the like.
2002 runs great, we use it for driver practice.
The 2003 bot had one of it's rear drive turrets dismantled and a few members took pieces from it, but I don't think they were supposed to take from that one. Otherwise 2003 should work if we were to ever put the parts back on.
The 2004 bot drives great, but during the 2005 season, we killed the motor running the second stage of the arm picking up tetras.
The team decided that the 2005 bot will be maintained in top, running condition indefinitely for obvious reasons. Currently the potentiometer controlling the arm needs to be adjusted for it to work properly.
The 2006 bot will be running at IRI and possibly Kettering Kickoff.

We also have our last OCCRA robot, but it doesn't drive anymore, we gave up on it.
The chassis and frame of the original CASEY bot are intact, but sans a controller. We might make something as a fun project out of it in the future.
Also, CASEY 2.0 is happily driving around blowing balloons for kids.

[EricH]

For us, in our early years, we dismantled the robots after one year or sent them to a sponsor. The main reason was we did not have a permanent storage area. Now, the lifespan has extended to: until cannibalized beyond repair, and then we keep the shell (so far, only 1 in that condition and another very difficult to cannibalize).