What was the most innovative feature this year?

[archiver]

Posted by Andy Baker at 05/22/2001 10:47 AM EST


Engineer on team #45, TechnoKats, from Kokomo High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.


In Reply to: What was the most innovative feature this year?
Posted by bill whitley on 05/21/2001 6:59 PM EST:



Here are the features I liked this year. As usual, I didn't get to see as many 'bots as I would've liked, that's for sure. There are many other excellent features on robots that I missed... these are just my favorites.

Best Drive Train: 71... pneumatic gear shifting, 4 wheel drive, load placement on two wheels at crucial times. Everyone wondered how they got it to look so easy... This is how.

Best Wheels: 111... They were hard to see, but they sure worked well. They really showed their stuff when their bot was used as a tow-bot.

Best Ball-Placing Arm: 67... how in the heck did they fold that thing up soooo tightly?

Best Goal Pushing Arms: 308... how many axii or movement was going on there? 5? 6? The coolest thing was the switchblade action of the pusher appendage

Best Goal Latching mechanisms: 33... they could grab the goals and let go so quickly, it was ridiculus.

Most Unique way to balance: 192... very un-conventional robot and team, with a very cool way to balance the bridge. GRT Rocks.

Most Dependable Balancer: 254... From their first regional to the nationals... these guys were money every time.

Coolest Looking Robot: 410... I think that this is the number of their team. They had a fiberglass shroud and paint job that was good as anyone's show car.

Neatest Operator Interface: 234... Yeah, they won awards all year long for their robo-arm control system, but I can't think of another system that was cooler.

Most Gutsy Drive System: 461... for a crew of Purdue college students to design a crab drive system, that took guts. They even switched it to tank steering at Nationals, and then back to crab at the IRI... amazing.

Andy B.