Grant Imahara VEXplorer Robot Challenge

[smartkid]

I'm one of the 25!

Dear Cody Smith,

Congratulations! You have been selected as one of the 25 contestants in the Grant Imahara VEXplorer Challenge. We received a wide variety of ideas and large number of applicants. We judged your idea to be one of the most interesting and compelling and welcome you to the competition.

We will ship a VEXplorer unit to you this week by UPS. If you do not receive it within a week, please contact...

Just got the e-mail today! So happy

Hello, my name is Cody Smith. I'll start with describing myself. I have always been interested in robotics and technology ever since I was a small child. I used to watch Battle Bots every day when I could until it stopped showing. I'm currently a Junior in high school attending Palm Bay high. I'm a member of the FIRST FRC robotics team number 2023 and the FIRST FTC team number 509. This year I lead our FTC team into the Florida regionals and placed 6th getting knocked out in the quarter finals. Our team did however win one of the six special judges awards. The Amaze award. For our omni-directional drive and our three point arm / manipulator. A picture of the O.R.C. or _O_mni-directional _R_obotics _C_law is attached to this e-mail. Our team is currently working on a bot to go to California for the Vex World Championship. We've handled all the Vex parts from the standard kit to Vexplorer's to the pneumatics. I also have done media work for a long time. I love media, Photoshop work, video editing work, etc. It's one of many things I like to do with my spare time on the computer and I have some pretty nice video editing software.

This competition to rebuild the Vexplorer is very interesting. we've already used the Vexplorer parts combined with regular Vex parts to build our three point arm but this limits the parts drastically. I do feel that it is more then possible to make something different out of those part though so here's my idea. The Vexplorer's best feature is it's ability to do recon. it's camera allows it to do so. But, it isn't all that versatile. My idea is to build a standard four wheel drive using two motors linked by the gears. And use the other two motors to make a separate pair of wheels on a rotateable axle. This would allow the Vexplorer to climb stairs, go over objects, etc. The overal purpose would be for extreme recon.

And yes, all 25 contestants get $100 to go shopping with on the vex site. Very, very cool.