Crazy Robot Inspection Stories

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Annapolis Aim High game. One kid shows up with the kitbot in pieces. We got him running.

This happened at Portland this year. They showed up with the kitbot. The SWAT kids and a bunch of other students spent all of Thursday building this robot, which actually ended up doing pretty well.

[pakratt1991]

Originally Posted by ErichKeane

This happened at Portland this year. They showed up with the kitbot. The SWAT kids and a bunch of other students spent all of Thursday building this robot, which actually ended up doing pretty well.

I was one of those SWAT members, They showed up weighing under 65 pounds and didn't even ship the robot, they just carried it in to the competition. I was waiting on them to hand them their schedule of practice matches and when they finally arrived I saw that the batter connector wasn't connected to the battery.

I asked them how it was supposed to run and the student there said that it ran great if you connected the motors directly to the leads of the battery...

The mentor had only brought 3 students because he read that was the maximum amount of students allowed to compete.

Thanks to an insane mount of help from Volunteers, local teams. I'd have to look back at the pictures to see which teams exactly were helping, I know 997, and 488, and the team across from them in the pits, this was a high number team, three thousand something, the name and number are still not coming to me. After many hours and more than a few trips to the machine shop they did end up competing and winning the rookie inspiration award.

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by pakratt1991

I was one of those SWAT members, They showed up weighing under 65 pounds and didn't even ship the robot, they just carried it in to the competition. I was waiting on them to hand them their schedule of practice matches and when they finally arrived I saw that the batter connector wasn't connected to the battery.

I asked them how it was supposed to run and the student there said that it ran great if you connected the motors directly to the leads of the battery...

The mentor had only brought 3 students because he read that was the maximum amount of students allowed to compete.

Thanks to an insane mount of help from Volunteers, local teams (I'd have to look back at the pictures to see which teams exactly were helping, I know 997, and 488, and the team across from them in the pits... Another high three thousand something team,) and the machine shop they did end up competing and winning the rookie inspiration award.

Correct! I was with the neighbors to the left (3210). I looked over a few times to see if they needed anything, but there were always a dozen+ people there! I was very impressed with how they did, but more so with the amount of people who helped out. Definitely GP at its finest.

[sparrowkc]

In 2007, our rookie year, somebody donated a 400 foot roll of green 14 gauge wire. We used it every place we could, including for four runs through our 5 foot arm. When our inspector said that the wire didn't meet the color coding requirements, we produced the rule he was referring to and pointed out that it only applied to wires on the input terminals of the speed controllers. He then decided that green wire wasn't allowable because green usually stands for ground. As a rookie team, we didn't know to escalate the problem to the lead inspector, and ended up rewiring the whole robot on practice day. Another team donated the ~50 feet of red and black wire. I wish we remembered which team that was so that we could thank them...

This was also the year that we assumed fitting in the sizing box meant fitting in the sizing box, not sitting in the sizing box without touching any of the walls. That was fun.