When Did You Finish Your Robot

[kevin.li.rit]

We were mechanically finished a day or two before shipped.

[IndySam]

Our robot will be finished after IRI.


But seriously

This is the first year that I have been on the team that we have shipped a robot that does every function well and doesn't need major work on Thursday. I am really pleased with the team this year.

Some auton work and a little tweaking and we are good-to-go with a minor weight problem

[DayZiro]

We had our robot controlled by the joysticks after only two weeks of getting it, not bad for a first-year team. We were able to spend the next 4 weeks adding a lifting arm, testing out a front U-shaped arm, rewriring, and changing the code.

We had something that we were proud of by Feb. 16 so we could test it out in a skirmish we held against some other local teams.

[boonski]

Team 1535's robot was finished but after we weighed Sir Jimmy (our robot), he was 4 lbs overweight... SO we are but we are not finished at the same time? If that makes any sense...

[sporno]

finished is a a very interpretable term. My team was able to ship a working machine that only needs a few things to get replaced ( there was a bad solenoid) , but is the robot really ever done? Like hey, lets try this program , or hey lets try this gear.

I belive that the robot is never done that it just evolves less rapidly

[ZakuAce]

Originally Posted by sporno

finished is a a very interpretable term. My team was able to ship a working machine that only needs a few things to get replaced ( there was a bad solenoid) , but is the robot really ever done? Like hey, lets try this program , or hey lets try this gear.

I belive that the robot is never done that it just evolves less rapidly

Agreed. There is always room for improvements!

[Betty_Krocker]

finish....?!?!?!?!?!?:
hahaha....you're funny....

but when one thinks about it....is a robot ever finished?

[Jimmy Cao]

Finishing... that's funny.

Sometime between championships and IRI =D

[Ed Sparks]

I predict it will be finished about 5 minutes before our 1st match on Friday, March 14. Actually "finished" might not be accurate, more like, "we aborted the remainder of the planned features". Yea, that's it.

[lasereyes]

8pm on the day before ship day.

[jimbot]

HA, who needs a finished robot when you can have all the fun of building one at regionals... anybody? 1 hour befor ship our launcher team shows up and says, "It doesn't work, throw the phnematics in and we will build it there." Doesn't that sound like fun...

[dtengineering]

Well, we THOUGHT we had finished our 2005 robot after the 2005 GTR. But it turned out it was a great practice drivebase for testing this year's drive code, so off came the arm, and on went a gyro and new code.

We THOUGHT we had finished our 2006 robot after the 2006 GTR. But it turned out that we needed a couple CIMs from it for this year's machine. So off came the gearboxes and CIMs then back on they went, minus two of the CIMs that we use to race around the track this year.

We THOUGHT we had finished our 2007 robot after the 2007 GTR, but it turned out that a nearby team wanted to borrow some pneumatics from it and we needed to re-use some of the sonar sensors, so off they came.

We THOUGHT we had finished building our 2008 robot when we put it in the shipping crate... but snapped the "hockey sticks" in about five minutes at Portland, and are now re-designing our gripper mechanism to work even better, and will be changing a few sensors as well when we get to Seattle.

I would, however, say that we have finally, truly, finished with our 2004 robot. After pulling the electronics several years ago, the motors last year, and the scissors lift (to use as a test to see if we wanted to scissors the ball over the overpass) this year... there just isn't that much left. So that would suggest that we typically finish a robot about five years after we start it.

Jason

[GeneralJB]

we were pretty lucky this year, we finished a few days ahead of schedule, only to realize that front-wheel drive wans't gonna cut it. View evidence file #1



yeah. it seems omni-wheels dont like 80 lbs focused on them alone. we swapped EVERYTHING and finished within a day and a half. just in time for shipping.

P.S., the robots nickname this year is Abrams, because it has a massive barrel on the front, and we never had to fix anything after matches. our most reliable in years!

[Danielle H]

We were driving it at 8:30pm the night before ship, but that doesn't mean we were done. One of our mentors was going to come in during school the next day and tweak some programming problems, and a couple other students were in the shop until about 1:30am to finish the first coat of paint. And when I got there an hour before shipping, things were still being looked at, put together and changed.
But, I got home at 11:30pm-11:45pm the day before ship date, which is the first time in the 3 years I've been on the team that I've come home before 2-3am.
It was kinda nice.
But I felt bad that I couldn't stay and paint.