Your Best Robot

[Pat Arnold]

My favorite MARS robot in the team's 3 year history is our 2006 "Aim High" competitor "Ball-istic". The design is deceptively simple, incredibly robust and a crowd pleaser. Its versatile abilities have allowed the team to pursue a multitude of community outreach activities:

We've used it to catapult ballons with preschoolers, throw "snowballs" (white poofballs) in Jupiter's Holiday parade, provide the public a chance to shot balls at targets at Fun Fairs, teach scouts about catapults (a Weblos Engineering requirement), played countless rounds of dodgeball... and it's just plain fun to watch!

[Billfred]

I've been in this competition for four years--three with 1293, and now one with 1618. Each year, there's always been some critical design flaw that's kept my team back. Window motor drive, hard-to-control casters, a shooter that just couldn't shoot, it wasn't working out one way or the other.

This season, Uppercut had its flaws--but we made all the right design choices. Of the twelve matches we played at Palmetto (10 qualifying, 2 elimination), we tipped twice (it happens), lost power once (and I can't even blame this one on the Rockwell block, the way our tower was shaking around), and lost five of the sprocket screws on our center wheel, causing us to be out for a match and a half.

Now, you may call not being able to finish five of twelve matches a high rate of success, but the problems we had were largely because of a lack of a good pre-match checklist. When we lost wheel screws, it became one of the kids' job to check every single nut on the wheels (all 36, critical ones swapped with locknuts) before each match. When the tower bucked around, causing the wire to the battery to pull out of the Rockwell block (YouTube)...well, it would've become a checklist item. (We got knocked out by the 1251/1626/1758 alliance after that match.)

Still, we had one of the fastest things on six wheels at Palmetto, and it didn't just drive its way into the Palmetto quarterfinals--it did it as an alliance captain, something no active team in the area has ever done before. Put it all together, and Uppercut is definitely the best robot I've had a hand in (and it's fast growing on me as the favorite, too).

Oh, and the arm almost works now. What'll we do with it? Well, it'll hopefully involve going north or south by a few states.

[Brad Voracek]

Well, we've had three really good robots... 2002, 2006, and 2007. 2002 was really simple, just two arms that grabbed the goals and then it lifted itself off the ground so it couldn't be pushed around, and that landed us our first regional runner up, and our first time into the eliminations at Championships.

2006 was also a good robot, although it didn't have anything to show for it. We could play mean defense and load balls into the high goal like nothing. However other teams could also easily play defense on us, with a stationary shooter and no camera to speak of. We also got jammed somewhat easily, which we had a fix for but never got around to using.

2007 I think was our best robot in our history, but random problems throughout the year didn't allow for us to really show that with awards or anything. We were third seeded in Los Angeles, where we did really good. Later on we found out techniques in driving that would make us even better, and had this regional been later on we may have been able to do a little better. Although beachbots (330) did take this regional, so it would have been a major challenge if we did make it that far. ;P
In Philadelphia we did amazing, and would have done even better had it not been for banebots problems. Our drivers had a lot of experience now and we were getting really good. The banebots transmissions failed in the second match of the semi finals, and luckily with the backup robot they were able to win the third match giving us a semifinalist. Our second in our 8 years of existence. However in this regional we did take a major hit which would prove to be a problem in atlanta.
In Atlanta, problem after problem occured. First we obviously had to change the banebots from the failure in Philly, so that made us miss our first practice match. Then we decided that with a hit in our "claw" (we used a suction cup, it had a lot more success than you'd expect though, and I think that deterred some teams, [suction cup? ew that'll never work]- the first thought I had when we started using it. I was proven wrong, but I'm sure other people though that when they first looked at it) we should change it. However changing it turned out to be more problematic, because now the chain it ran on decided to pop off every once and a while towards the end of the match. This really hurt us for picking, making us look unreliable. Then we fixed it, right before our last qualifying round. However we forgot to plug in one of the pneumatic tubings... causing a leak, causing suction not to work. Well that sucked. We played mean defense in a lot of rounds, but problems with our bot and a seeming unreliability would have made me not pick us for eliminations either. Ah well.

Besides robot, 2007 also turned out to be our most successful overall also, with our first blue banner in 8 years, a regional chairmans award. =)

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by xzvrw2

i will come back with my desicion later, but the draft is starting now so i must go.

Why? So you can witness Millen breaking your hearts again (oh, look another reciever taken in the first round )?

[AcesPease]

1999 Maverick: double omni wheels on one end (before they were invented?), Giant cog wheels on the other end for climbing the puck. Articulated arm with powerful yaw capable of stealing playing pieces from other robots and righting our robot if flipped. Lost only one round at National Championships winning with 1 and 48.

2001 Scorpion: Balanced the ramp by reaching over the side and then letting the software fine tune. Our driver figured out the trick, it was not the original plan, the software was supposed to do all the work. Still running, really fun at demos.

2002 Ace: Tiny bot that beat the beast in quarter finals at Disney. Amazing high speed auto locating program got this bot to the goals first every time.

2004 Mayday: Nothing outstanding, but this bot did well on the field. Winner at BAE. Played 3 3 round eliminations in a row on the Newton Field before being stopped by the Buckeye champs of that year.

2006 Pokerface: a bit of an overachiever like Mayday, can still shoot ten poof balls in less than 6 seconds. Finalist at BAE, Winner at UTC New England and #1 seeded finalist on Newton.

2007 Ace of Spades: My current favorite. Arm is a bit reminiscent of Maverick with the addition of an elevator. Our only other robot with omni wheels. Fast and maneuverable, does best in an all offensive game, (check out the Toronto elimination matches on Blue Alliance). #1 seed and finalist at UTC Connecticut, Winner in Toronto.

The robots that won banners (1999, 2004, 2006, 2007) had few or no breakdowns at Championships and drivers that were able to improvise solutions to game challenges on the fly.

[Squirrel Lord]

I am gonna have to say this year for the following reasons:
We entered into the qualifying matches of every regional we attended
We were always either a first round pick or a team captain
We went undefeated in the Prelims of Las Vegas(Going up against such teams as 233 and 254) and through Galileo
We recieved our first ever regional Win at Vegas
We were the first seed coming out of the Prelims in Galileo (then promptly losing our first two matches...)

[efoote868]

This is a pretty difficult decision... seems to me we've had pretty unique and strong robots in the past (and hopefully the future).

Our 2003 robot had an amazing form to fit the function.
Our 2004 robot placed second at the championship event.
Our 2005 robot won IRI.
This year's robot had an amazing form to fit the function.

I'm going to say this year's robot... simply because of my role in creating it .

[Chris Fultz]

For Cyber Blue, I would have to name 2 -

2001 - the robot won the Innovation in Control award for the integration of the operator (a backpack and mechanical arm) with the robot (the robot arm followed the human / mechanical arm). The robot performed its intended function well. Seeing this robot and the team at Epcot got me involved with FIRST.

2007 - the robot won two regionals and two design awards and was consistent and reliable. (but most importantly, it was complete and working when it went into the shipping crate!)

[AcesPease]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

For Cyber Blue,

2007 - the robot won two regionals and two design awards and was consistent and reliable. (but most importantly, it was complete and working when it went into the shipping crate!)

It is amazing how much better the robot is if the drivers and programmers can spend some time with it!

[Donut]

I have 3 "best" robots I can think of for us, all for different reasons:

2004: Most successful. This is our only robot to make it to the Finals at any competition, we seeded #5 or #6, and we even received an award from team 60 for our game strategy. It was simple and really never broke, what amazes me is we did that well with so much to improve on it still (programming very lacking that year, as I did 50+% of it as a freshman).

2005: Best performer. We finished 4th overall, being picked by the #1 seed and averaging more than 5 tetras per match (highest at AZ Regional). We only made it to the semis that year (largely due to strategy), but it was easily the most threatening robot we've had. Our partners 980 had the 2nd highest tetra average at AZ and finished #1 in their division at the Champs, which makes me wonder if we could have finally broken our curse of bad Championship showings had we gone that year.

2007: Best personally. Our robot was in the middle as far as how good our robots have been over the years, but our programming team attempted more than ever before. The autonomous and sensor usage I helped with was far and beyond anything we've ever attempted, and had we actually had time to test things and get them working our season could have been a very different story.

[xzvrw2]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

Why? So you can witness Millen breaking your hearts again (oh, look another reciever taken in the first round )?

hey hey hey
he was the best player in the draft.
haha

i think my most favorite robot of 65s has to be our 2005 robot. that robot was awesome. i put alot of work designing the back wheelie bar and me and one teamate val spent a lot of time working on that new skewer. i think that it has to be my favorite. now im not saying that i dont love oue national championship winning robot, im just saying that it worked for that game. haha

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by 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).

PJ beat me to it. It's hard to say anything bad about those robots because those are the two most 177 alum would say are tops. We look at them every year to see what we've done right in the past.

98 was a #1 Qualifier at Nationals that year and many teams this year used a variation on our roller claw from that year to pick up tubes.

2001 Was such a simple and elegant design and it still runs fine. It was also the debut of the 2nd gen Bobcat extendo arm when we switched from monocoque sheetmetal to extruded box.

[xcarmichael65x]

well i think that this year was probly one of the best years in first.
we picked for the first time at nationals.and
i beleive that if our arm dident break we could have went all the way.
but thats just my thoughts

[d.courtney]

Minus the problems we had with it during qualifiers that year, I have to say my favorite comes from my grade nine year, our 04 bot [besides it was dang pretty, water cut and powder coated]. So in terms of prettiness (we could use the water cutter again but that was the only year we have had a good enough student drafter willing to draft an entire robot) that takes the cake. Our teams best years for how far we got though would be 02 and 03. 02 we won the first ever Canadian Regional, and 03 we placed very well at Champs (forget final result but it was good). This year was also great for us dispite technical problems in Waterloo [mechanical problems with boom and lift, and it was us that went up in smoke one match ], and in GTR we suffered the effects of the "random selections", with 4 of 8 matches playing shorthanded, and only 2 of 8 games had a team in the top 2/3 of ranking aligned with us [however we still managed to be part of the 4th highest score at GTR, with our team pulling in 5 of the 8 tubes scored] in the end we placed 55th of 63 teams, but were happy knowing our robot wasn't the problem (in GTR at least) ... plus every year we miss at least a week of build due to the bad winter weather our area gets (this year it was 13 days missed), so with this being the year we have missed the most and seeing how well our robot performed we are happy in that aspect too.

[Dizzy_Lizzy]

I'd have to say our best robot was in 2003's stack attack. The robot was very effective at running into boxes and knocking them down. It was always amazing when the autonomous worked perfectly and it drove up that ramp, arms extended, sending all the boxes cascading down onto the other side. beautiful.