Has this ever happened before?

[BBnum3]

I've been seeing a lot of heated discussion on these forums lately, so I thought I'd lighten it up a little bit with this amusing story from the Newton Finals.

Our team has two ramps, and when lifted they are pretty much even with the top level of electronics, as seen here. The main breaker switch is very close to the edge of the ramps.

We had no problems with this setup until the second match of the Newton Finals. Team 1592 and their big wheels drove up our ramps at the end of the match. There was one unfortunate side-effect: They turned us off! Their robot drove on the main breaker switch and we lost power, but as intended, the pneumatics kept on lifting. The IFI rep at the field found it very amusing and said he had never seen it before. It was a funny end to a great day of matches on Newton.

[teenmisfit]

haha wow thats sweet luck

[Lil' Lavery]

In 2005, we managed to turn ourself off at a scrimmage when the gripper on our arm flipped backwards and hit our main breaker.

[Greg Marra]

The only ways I've ever accidentally turned off my robot is by blowing the 120A breaker. Whoops.

[Schnabel]

And the best part is that you guys still lifted the ramps. That is amazing! Good job with that!

[flightofone]

At the Boston regional, my daughter's team 1100 swapped in a fresh battery for one match, but ran the battery cable over the forklift mechanism. They drove out, grabbed a tube, raised the forklift and unplugged themselves. It runs in the family - at the UTC regional our team 2104 ran the battery cable over our pneumatic ramp deployment arms. Luckily gravity and springs take over once the piston pushed out the ramps, and unplugged us.

[whytheheckme]

Our team has a pin mechanism that releases our ramps. This is pulled by a spinning cable with the pin attached. When the motor is turned on, the pin pulls, and spins around.

We had not tried our ramps using some new code I wrote until our first match at our first regional. When the driver deployed the ramp, the bot shut off. We were very confused as to why this happened.

After further inspection, we realized that this pin mechanism was placed directly over our 120A breaker. The pin actually shut the bot off (a self 'destruct' bot!)... The solution was to change the code to make the pin go the other way

Jacob

[Kevin Sevcik]

Way way back when alliances were really new, you had to lift kick balls into a trough made of steel tube. So we had a multi-jointed arm and were trying out a chassis made of bent sheet, so it was mostly flat on top. The arm sort of folded up and part rested on top of the robot. Unfortunately we rushed out one round and our battery cable was up there as well. So the match starts, we start to deploy our arm, and about 2 seconds later, we're sitting there, having disconnected our own battery.

[EricH]

L.A. 2005: three robots on one side, three on the other. Well, that's how it started, but one robot was just slightly out of the size box and wasn't allowed to get back in. This left a high stacking bot and a low under-goal bot. The under-goal robot went out and tried to spill a tetra under a goal--and died. They'd hit their main breaker. The remaining robot lost the match. (Two of the robots on that alliance went on to win the regional.)

[Eldarion]

Several times (twice at St. Louis and once at Midwest) our radio cable was unintentionally placed in range of our drive system's module rotation chain. We powered on for a few seconds, and then the modules rotated and the chain ate the radio cable, killing us for the match. Very frustrating!

[FixToTheMax]

I can't remember who it was, but while I was in our Pit during the Championship, a mentor from some team mentioned unlucky happenings with game pieces. He said how in 2005, their arm and no mechanism for securely locking the tetra in place, and it slid all the way down their arm into their electronics board. Fortunately, no victors were cracked or broken. Unfortunately, one of the 4 points of the tetra landed right on the off button for their 'bot, and they turned themselves off. We both had a quick laugh about it, seemed pretty unfortunate, but all in good humor.

We sent a battery flying about 25 feet.... We had forgotten to tighten the velcro strap on the battery, and went into a high speed spin, and launched the battery. This was last year, in Aim High. It was actually quite impressive...

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

We sent a battery flying about 25 feet.... We had forgotten to tighten the velcro strap on the battery, and went into a high speed spin, and launched the battery. This was last year, in Aim High. It was actually quite impressive...

Impressive or Deadly?

Knowing the older Exide batteries that weigh more than this year's MK's....

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Impressive or Deadly?

Knowing the older Exide batteries that weigh more than this year's MK's....

And contain highly corrosive gel in a brittle plastic case....

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by 114ManualLabor

We sent a battery flying about 25 feet.... We had forgotten to tighten the velcro strap on the battery, and went into a high speed spin, and launched the battery. This was last year, in Aim High. It was actually quite impressive...

I am proud to announance that this is the first year we have NOT thrown a battery off the bot. So much for Team 237 Traditions