Your Best Robot

[Dan Petrovic]

From what I have seen, 166's best robot to date came from 2003.

This robot was one of few to use a two-speed transmission. Once the team got autonomous working it flew right to the wall of boxes and beat almost everyone to the top. The two speed transmission made it easy to push many boxes up and over the ramp. (~10 at a time IIRC) It was then able to hold it's own on the top of the ramp.

It didn't do too well during the official season, however it won almost all of the off season competitions it attended, including Battlecry 4.

Edit: I forgot to mention a few things. Although the team won most of the matches, they ranked lower than they should (mid-teens) because of the way ranking was done. 2x opponent's score + own score. That robot was almost too good. It often won matches with scores like 90 (in this year, 90 was quite significant, to 3 or so.

Yep.

[KF987]

For 987
I liked many things about our robot this year, we tried alot of new things this year ex. we went 6 wheels and our own two speed transmission for the first time.

but I personally liked the 06' bot ACE the best. I thought it was really fun to watch.

[I.U.man_22]

For cyber blue 234 this was our best year and our best robot without a doubt.

[Nuttyman54]

For 971, our most successful was 2004 (1st seed, regional winner), but the 07 robot was by far the best engineered and best machined that they've built to date.

For 190....that's a hard one. 2004 has been my personal favorite, with the awesome autonomous mode, but the 07, 99, and 92 robots have arguably been the most successful as far as competitions go.

[Wayne Doenges]

For Team 1501 IMHO the 2006 robot was the best.
Had an awesome autonomous mode. We could score 8-10 balls each time.
The camera would lock onto the light and know how far it was from the goal by the angle of the camera and using a gear tooth sensor would adjust the speed of the shooter to allow us to be moving forward or backwards and still put every ball into the goal.
It had a failsafe that would not allow it to shoot if it did not see the light. This would keep us from firing balls into the crowd.
The camera was also set up to ignore every light but the green light. For testing we would pass a lit fluorescent light in front of the green light and the camera would not see it.

And last, but not least....WE GOT PUBLISHED!!!

[Kyle A]

Out of the 4 years that i have been on the team I would say this years is the best. Also our mentor who has been observing the team from its first year said this years was the best. We had a robot that not only did the task, it did it well. We had scoring arm that was fast and reliable that scored on the first row we scored 7 in a row all by ourselves a few times, and we had a ramp that was capable of holding 2 robots about 12 inches. The ramps work the way they were supposed to, but some teams had some trouble getting up. For the first time ever we finished the robot early and we were able to work some of the bugs out. Also for the first time we were able to get it powder coated, which made the robot the best looking robot the team has had.
We still don't have the best robot though, there are minor problems that we had, like people have trouble on the ramp, but no one is prefect every robot out there has its problems. But one thing that does happen to everyone is that they learn from there mistakes, and the next year plan things better. Every year we say we have the best robot that the team has had, and every year after we build something better.
Another thing we found out is that even though you have the best running, looking robot that you have ever had, doesn't mean you will win. And if you have a robot that doesn't do anything but defense, and isn't the best, don't think your out of the game, because those robot preform just as well as the best scoring running robots, and can bring home a win.

[Joel J]

173: 2005. The robot had enormous potential, a good deal of which was realized.. 2002 if only counting the years I was on the team.
229: 2005. Not even a doubt.

[P.J. Baker]

For 177, I think that the 2001 robot was our best. Very simple to build maintain and drive. Pretty well suited to the game as well. It edges out the 1998 robot which took more effort to build and was much harder to drive (Doug and Jessie just made it look easy).

[Michael Corsetto]

This year by far, even though our awards don't show it. Last year, we had a sweet shooter that turreted and tilted to shoot from any position on the field, but it shot the balls at a slow rate (about 1 per second), thus eliminating our competitiveness.

We learned from our mistakes last year, and focused on making this year's robot as quick of a scorer as possible. We made to my knowledge the only double-jointed, unfolding, lock-in elevator arm in FIRST, which started at 4 feet and unfolded out to 10. (for video of the arm unfolding check out this match, we're the robot in the middle on the right hand side) The grabber picked up off the ground fairly quickly and we scored quickly as well. We averaged around 4.5 ringers per match at the 3 regionals we attended, which is pretty good for this years game and all of the defense going on.

Even though we only won 2 awards this year, as opposed to 8 last year, I still think we moved light years ahead into becoming a real powerhouse on the field. Hopefully next year, even though I'll be gone, the team will keep a mindset of speed and simplicity and build another competitive machine.

Mike C.

[Steve Kaneb]

Originally Posted by Rex114

We learned from our mistakes last year, and focused on making this year's robot as quick of a scorer as possible. We made to my knowledge the only double-jointed, unfolding, lock-in elevator arm in FIRST, which started at 4 feet and unfolded out to 10.

I know of at least 2 more at BAE, 172 and another.

On the topic of best team robot, our 2004 robot was the most autonomous competition robot I've ever seen or heard about.
Complexity is the way to go!

[Bcliff358]

2005 was our best year . We won a the SPBLI regional and were finalists in the Philadelphia Regional. It was my favorite game too.

[Bree Tonte]

although this is my first year on our team, i have been to other year's competitions and i would still have to say that this year's robot was the best, the chassis worked great, the arm worked smoothly, and the auto-mode was a success!!

[mathking]

Our 2005 robot ("Low Rider") was probably our best from an engineering and performing in the game aspect. At the regional it was OK but suffered from the tetras getting hooked incorrectly on the arm if they swung too much. So we were about .500. At the Championships we made one little fix and ended up with a bot that went 7-2 and came within inches of winning in the two losses. We were scoring consistently all over the field. It was certainly not near the best robot there, but it did its job very well. Drove well, scored quickly and pretty much never broke. We ended up spending a lot of time in the pits sitting around. Which was particularly gratifying because at the start of that season we made a conscious effort to build a robust robot (following Woodie's admonition) that would not break as often as the previous year's cool looking but not so cool performing robot.

[Joe J.]

I've got to give it to our 2005 robot Carlson X

Two years later and still running with no major mechanical failures. Hacksaw & Drill in all its glory.

From what I've learned our original rookie bot 465's 2000 robot Zeuswas our best ever untill it got flipped over the bar in the Great Lakes quarterfinals.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

648's long list of "best" robots include:

2002: "The Shopping Cart" - This robot was completely amazing to watch. It sucked up those soccer balls and filled the basket very quickly and efficiently. We used a transmission, the first and only year we did that. There was a goal lift on the latching mechanism to transfer the weight for traction gain.

2004: "Napoleon" - This was a fun robot to drive. I loved hanging with this robot and it was the first robot to get major success in game, until we got wiped by the Technokat alliance in Chicago. This bot was also the 7th seed in Archimedes at Championship.

2005: "Alexander the Great" - There were absolutely no failures what-so-ever with this robot and it still runs the way it was built to. This robot extended outwards for stability instead of flopping over. It won us the Xerox Creativity Award and silver in StL, as well as a controversial semi-final loss in Chicago that year. It was soooo fun to drive this robot around.

2007: "Spartacus" - This was our first attempt at crab steer. We had mild success with autonomous. We also won the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control Award in Chicago and yet another silver medal, first overall draft pick and top scorer in Midwest. Had no success in Atlanta, though.