FASTEST 2008 ROBOT

[JVN]

Originally Posted by RyanN

I agree with XaulZan11. Even though some robots may go up to 30FPS, how much pushing power do they have so they can make laps? I know 148 was faster than us, but in the Bayou Regional, we could made more laps than they did, and I believe we actually held the record for the most laps in a single match at the Bayou Regional. Don't quote me on this because I don't have concrete facts and I'm going off of memory and scouting.

We didn't really focus on lapping in New Orleans. Most matches we were playing a defensive role. This greatly reduced our lap count. As the season went on and the game developed, so did our strategies. This resulted in drastically different play between St. Louis (week 1) and New Orleans (week 5).

Our team focuses on continuous improvement. We knew that bringing our St Louis game to New Orleans would be foolish. (Though, I think we all wish the auton would have been up to the STL level.)

364 has an incredible machine, and they are a great team. I'm looking forward to seeing them again at IRI. It was cool to see such a great hurdler could also function well as a lap-bot.

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

148 has nowhere near the top speed in f/s that many other teams did.

This is true. We are geared at about 20 ft/s free-speed. During the build season we were geared as high as 30 ft/s free-speed, but this turned out to be foolish.

Our goal was to build a robot which was fast on the field, not fast in a drag race. Our experimentation and iteration showed that we were faster and more consistent with a slower top-speed (it is weird to describe 20fps as "slower").

This is why we would get beat easily by some other lap-bots in drag-races, or in open-field lap-races. However, this system was not intended for either of those scenarios, ours was designed to compete in a FIRST Overdrive match, with 5 other robots. *shrug*

We may be one of the fastest robots, but we are not the fastest.
Kudos to all the teams who can toast us!

-John