Crazy Robot Inspection Stories

[FRC4ME]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Battery used for counter weight on a moving arm to help hold robot on pipe. This was actually legal that year.

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

I've always wanted to do that, because I know it would bother people. To bad my 2008 trebuchet with a battery counter weight got over ruled...

In 2009, 339 mounted their battery and electronics on a pneumatic slide that would shift the entire assembly left or right six inches to decrease our moment of inertia when turning on the slippery field. We not only passed inspection, but won Delphi Driving Tomorrow's Technology...in Atlanta.

Originally Posted by Katie_UPS

We were weighing in towards the end of Wisconsin this year to see how much weight we could play with for upgrades. Apparently we were all of a sudden 20 pounds over. The inspectors realized that the air was compressed, so let that out and it dropped to ten pounds over weight...


Then the inspector took his foot off the scale.

Originally Posted by Jeff Pahl

The tricky part was for Chris to only let off some of the weight after I told you guys to let the air out...

And Kevin Kolodziej's reaction when you figured out what was going on was priceless

This is hilarious. Good to know inspectors have a sense of humor, too. The funny thing is, I probably would have been shocked: "I didn't know air weighed so much!"

It also reminds me of earlier this year when we weighed our crate. The rest of us had to leave the room to avoid bursting out laughing as we watched three engineers scratch their heads wondering how they had miscalculated the weight by 240 lbs, when one of them was standing inside the crate on the scale.