pic: Team 148 - Robowranglers 2010 - Armadillo

[thefro526]

Now that I've watched this video five or more times, I feel like I can make an educated comment on "Armadillo" and the Team 148/217 (And whatever other teams are in this whole team IFI) Collaboration.

As I saw robots being posted up on CD this year, I kept thinking to myself "None of these robots have the capability to dominate a match". I began to think to myself that there would be no way any single machine could dominate a match this year, similar to lunacy.

Then I saw this video. I realized that Breakaway could be dominated. I also realized a lot of other things, things that I thought I already knew. I noticed that Team 148 (and presumably 217) do substantial amount of prototyping before they even start to design robots. This is where we've failed every year. We look at the game a design a machine from day one and we always are trying to finish as early as possible. I never thought to slow things down and prototype and research and just play around with some concepts. Maybe next year we'll have to take this new approach.

Regardless, Armadillo is surely one hell of a machine.