Your Best Robot

[Andy A.]

This is an easy one for me.

My favorite robot on team 95 was from 2002. We called her Feynman, but everyone just called it the popcorn popper or grasshopper. I am terribly proud of her. I really threw my self into the build and was rewarded with a driver position. I feel spoiled now. Feynman was easy and flashy to drive and altogether too fast. It was like driving a remote control sports car.

I still remember the noise the crowd made the during our first run down a line of balls. I had a huge grin for the rest of the day. She did one thing and did it very very well. It wasn't the teams most successful robot but certainly the most fun and most recognized.

[AcesPease]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

This is an easy one for me.

My favorite robot on team 95 was from 2002. We called her Feynman, but everyone just called it the popcorn popper or grasshopper. I am terribly proud of her. I really threw my self into the build and was rewarded with a driver position. I feel spoiled now. Feynman was easy and flashy to drive and altogether too fast. It was like driving a remote control sports car.

I still remember the noise the crowed made the during our first run down a line of balls. I had a huge grin for the rest of the day. She did one thing and did it very very well. It wasn't the teams most successful robot but certainly the most fun and most recognized.

I remember that robot. Very fun to watch

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

This is an easy one for me.

My favorite robot on team 95 was from 2002. We called her Feynman...

This robot set the standard in FRC with regard to picking up balls. It could pick up a row of 20 soccer balls in about 4 seconds. That is no small feat.

We based our pickup system on our 2004 robot purely on team 95's design. I am sure this effort from team 95 inspired more than just our team.

Thanks, team 95.

Andy Baker

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

This is an easy one for me.

My favorite robot on team 95 was from 2002. We called her Feynman, but everyone just called it the popcorn popper or grasshopper.

I remember seeing video of this during at WRRF workshop before my first season on a team. I've been looking for that video ever since. If anyone knows where I can find said video, please PM me. That robot was awesome

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

I remember seeing video of this during at WRRF workshop before my first season on a team. I've been looking for that video ever since. If anyone knows where I can find said video, please PM me. That robot was awesome

I have that video on my laptop. I'll see if I can dig it up.

[Bill Gold]

Originally Posted by Nuttyman54

I remember seeing video of this during at WRRF workshop before my first season on a team. I've been looking for that video ever since. If anyone knows where I can find said video, please PM me. That robot was awesome

That was probably from one of my presentations. I've got the videos on this computer, too. I'll try to find it and put it up somewhere if Cory doesn't beat me to it.

<edit>
Here's a link to one video of that robot...

http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p...&current=1.flv

If you remember any other videos from my presentations that you haven't been able to find shoot me a PM and I can send them to you or send you a copy of the presentation itself. I'm like a packrat, and keep everything I do related to FIRST, even though I'm not involved anymore.
</edit>

My favorite robot to work on was my 2003 robot. It was a 6-motor swerve drive (the first non-coaxially driven swerve on the west coast) using Drill and CIM motors to drive the wheels and the two Globe motors to rotate the modules in sets of 2. It was designed by a 19 year old non-engineering student, a 19 year old philosophy major, a 19 year old civil engineering major, and a 17 year old high school student. There are lots of pictures floating around of it, but if you're unable to find any let me know and I'll find them for you.

[AndyB]

My favorite robot that I was around for was definitely Black Widow, or 2005 Triple Play robot.

http://www.cooneyrobotics.com/photos/2004/last.jpg

[Jesse177]

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).

Thanks P.J. I would have to say that I have a couple favorites.

97' If the controller didn’t break we might have been able to edge out Beatty in the semi's that year. (We did beat them to the top with a tube that year. I wish we had video of that round) We also had top score that year with I think it was 228 points in a seeding round.

98' I'll never forget the human player that threw a ball at our claw so hard I thought we were finished. Instead the robot just shook and kept going. We lost to the Chief in NH in the semi's going a couple tie breakers back. We also seeded first in epcot and won two quality awards.

01' Tommy and Eric made that machine work so smoothly.

06' Our defensive power house. Greg and Andrew/ Chris had that machine working better than any of us would have imagined.

07' The "Ring Wrangler II" our 97 robot was the Ring Wrangler I. This machine needed small adjustments and the help of two perfect robots to give us our first championship win. Thanks to Steve and Hunter of course...

[JackN]

This is a tough one for me. Our best robot and our most effective robot are two different animals. Our best robot was our 2004 robot. It was a great defensive robot, and easily our best driven and strongest robot. This robot has been the base of design for all but one robot that came after it. That was our most effective robot, our 2006 robot. That robot was the only robot we ever built that was a true offensive juggernaut. I would say we were in the top 15 in scoring that year. We were able to outscore all but a handful of teams. Either us or 70 made it to the finals in every event we attended. In my opinion that robot will be the one that our team will always remember because that season was one that will go down as one of our best.

[Chris Marra]

Originally Posted by Jesse177

Thanks P.J. I would have to say that I have a couple favorites.

97' If the controller didn’t break we might have been able to edge out Beatty in the semi's that year. (We did beat them to the top with a tube that year. I wish we had video of that round) We also had top score that year with I think it was 228 points in a seeding round.

98' I'll never forget the human player that threw a ball at our claw so hard I thought we were finished. Instead the robot just shook and kept going. We lost to the Chief in NH in the semi's going a couple tie breakers back. We also seeded first in epcot and won two quality awards.

01' Tommy and Eric made that machine work so smoothly.

06' Our defensive power house. Greg and Andrew/ Chris had that machine working better than any of us would have imagined.

07' The "Ring Wrangler II" our 97 robot was the Ring Wrangler I. This machine needed small adjustments and the help of two perfect robots to give us our first championship win. Thanks to Steve and Hunter of course...

What's most interesting looking at each team's list of sucessful seasons is which robot was technically the best, and which year you had the most sucess. Although we have yet to actually pull out 95-02 to show students (like me), I would probably call 2007 our most well-designed robot yet, considering the amount of design that went into it, number of times we had to fix it (one burnt CIM, some burnt FP's and BB's, and a gearbox replacement in all, right?), and the amount of student involvement in CADD and machining it.

However, despite a national championship win, one can easily argue that 2006 was a more successful season, with a finalist award at WWZ, two regional wins, a divisional win, a close semi-final loss on Einstein, and victory at Battlecry. All of that is compared to two semi-finalist finishes and the championship. However, the 2006 robot was constantly broken, with an imperfect shooter and IFI wheels that seemed to fail every third match. So, which one was more successful? Are we focusing on the features, reliability, and construction of a robot, or the number of awards it won?

The question I would ask is to the aforementioned teams in the original post, teams like 71, 111, 233, 254, 469, 1114 (just the ones that came to mind first), and which robots were their "best" if you ignore what awards they won. Which robots were the most inspirational, revolutionary, or which robot's actually caused rule changes in future year. A lot of teams have mentioned their robots in terms of awards, but what robots really inspired you for the future and changed the way you thought about design the next time balls, torroids, or tetras (eh?) came up again in a game?

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Bill Gold

<edit>
Here's a link to one video of that robot...

http://s125.photobucket.com/albums/p...&current=1.flv

</edit>

*sigh* That video was always a disappointment to me. The potentiometer on our control board used to ramp up the roller speed had failed and as a result we missed the last few balls as the rollers bogged down and stalled. It is, so far as I know, the most widely distributed clip of us running a line, and we didn't even get them all!

Oh well. Better then the first few clips of us running a line. Until we learned to properly ramp up the roller speed, balls would just shoot straight up 15 feet and out of the hopper. It was impressive, but useless. My co-driver and I had plotted to do it intentionally during our first practice match with out telling anyone, but decided against it at the last second. The scoring table was right next to the field and we didn't want to bombard them on our first day out.

-Andy A.

[Starke]

I would say that the best robot out of the G.R.R. plant is the 2004 robot. "Roxanne" was a great design that accomplished the game task with proficiency. It went undefeated at the Buckeye Regional that year, and made it on the Einstein Field at The Championship Event. There is a picture of her attached. You can see a great video of her in a match here.

[JudyVandy]

Well, I go back as far as the team does, and, I do remember most of them.

Chuck's best was probably PI, the 1999 'bot, which wound up a Championship Finalist. It's followed closely, in my opinion by the 2007 version and the 2002 version. Chuck XI (2007) won the Philly Regional, as a defensive bot and has an awsome drive train that can go anywhere we want it to go. We didn't score many points, but we sure kept our opponents from scoring. Chuck and 'Moose' of 2002 also were great robots and won us an engineering award in NJ that year. Yes, I did say 2 robots. Moose was independently controlled so he could return to our home zone while still connected to Chuck.

[LightWaves1636]

For Team 1636, the 2007 robot is by far the best. It's based off of the 2005 bot and basically the same thing except for the gripper but since we knew what exactly to build, we improved all the components with a better jack and etc. Our robot never broke down except once and that's because a pwm cable came loose and made our arm useless. I wish though, that our team actually went with a better drive train, I told my team over and over that I wanted traction wheels and omni wheels but no, then they agreed with me at Championships.

[Qbranch]

I don't think I can say that I have a specific robot of ours I like best of all. Rather, theres specific components that I thought were really nifty out of three of ours.

2005: Our 2005 robot had a nice mecanum drive with a 'powerslide' function, which our driver (who sadly graduated last year ) used to his advantage to slide around curves and play games with inertia... enough to get him a 'drive it like you stole it' award from another team at the boilermaker that year.

2006: Our 2006 robot had a really sweet shooter and an autoshoot so stable our operator never touched the manual button, plus it shot up to two balls per second and hit about 80% of the time, even when being pushed around. Unfortunately, our plastic drive sporckets for the brecoflex track were a little too thin walled, and broke every so often.

2007: Our 2007 robot had a great elevator, capable from going from floor to 3rd row scoreing in just 1 second. The elevator had a total of 1.5hp behind it, a nice delrin and ball bearing slide system with a triple extension timing belt drive. The gripper also had the capability of rotating the tube within it.

any comments?

-q

-q