Best Robot Ever 92-07 edition

[Jason Morrella]

I'm surprised there's any debate over the most dominant robot in FIRST history: IMHO, The 71 bot in 2001 was by far the best ever. No bot in the world could beat it - the only way it could lose was if they made a mistake or had a malfunction, otherwise everyone else was playing for second. Heck, 254 and 111 were considered by many to have the 2nd and 3rd most dominant robots that year, and even paired together with 33 at the Championship in 2001 they couldn't match 71. Must be tough for Beatty to have to struggle through the debate of which robot was the most dominant ever - the 71 bot in 97, the 71 bot in 01 or the 71 bot in 02. Kind of a no lose situation if there ever was one.

For 2002 - I'm surprised many forgot the Team 60 robot. Once 60 got some glitches worked out at the first regional, they could not be moved when they latched onto the goals (even 2 on 1, and it didn't matter how/where teams pushed them). If my memory is correct (I don't have the video), even with a broken arm they had the Beatty alliance beat in the Championship semifinals except that their partner lost power heading back to the home zone and didn't get the 10 point bonus. But both 71 and 60 were clearly amazing robots in 2002, so it's splitting hairs either way.

Anyway, attempting a list of the 10 best robots of all time:

71 - 2001
60 - 2002
47 - 2000
111 - 2003
60 & 254 - 2004
Triplets - 2006
71 - 2002

I give up - it's hard to finish any top 10 list. In addition to the teams above, which many would list as having top 5 robots in probably 3-5 different years, any "top 10 of all-time" list seems incomplete to me without teams 330, 45 and 25 included - multiple years with amazing robots. So I'll reserve my last 3 spots for those three teams - though there are many other incredible teams & robots certainly right there with all those listed above.

I can't comment on any year before 1998, which was my first. But I will add that the four "teams" that clearly stood out the most for me in the early years as having the biggest impact on FIRST and the most inspiring/intimidating robots to us "newbies" (at least in my case) were 45, 47, 71 and 111. I credit those veteran teams (and a number of others) with raising the FIRST "bar" in a way that motivated hundreds of teams to improve their own programs.