2007's Best Robot Ramps

[JesseK]

I have another pic of 39th AeroSquadron and 1102 Maiken Magic on our ramps too I wish we would have begun our "You Climb 'em You Sign 'em" Campaign at VCU, the ramps would be full of purple signatures showing that this year's game really required an alliance that worked together.

By design, I thought 254's lifts were spectacular. Not only could they deploy and lift in the closing seconds, but they were light and out-of-the-way enough so to allow for an excellent tube-scoring mechanism. Even though a design flaw was discovered in the elims in Vegas, they simply had their alliances adjust when climbing, allowing for consistent ramping when it was needed.

By function, the team that was allied with 233 on Einstein had the best this year I thought. Everyone witnessed the last-second deployment where both robots shot up going from nothing to fully deployed & ramped in the last 5 seconds? That was pretty amazing.

Tips for future ramps: Railings! The main reason people liked the functionality of our ramps was that they could push up and the railings would keep them from falling off. The back railing also kept them from going too far (and running into the robot on the other side). I think any of the bots that had weight to spare could have put 1" high railings on the outer sides so that robots have a MUCH less probability of falling off when trying to ramp quickly.