Tips to make your robot look good.

[pm 2389]

we use painted aluminum sheet sideing that we etch are sponsors in.

[jblay]

I think giving the robot a face makes it look super awesome.





Also cading out your robot and knowing where everything is going to go (especially electronics) helps make your bot not only good looking but much more organize and easy to deal with at competition.

[Karibou]

For the past few years, 1189 has used fabric for either robot parts (2006), or robot coverings. One of our mentors/sponsors is a wonderful seamstress, and she takes care of all of our bumper and robot clothing needs. What we call our robot clothing is a easy way to protect the electronics, springs, wires, chains, etc. of our robots, display sponsor logos, and look good (don't forget, your robot's image plays a part in the Imagery award!). All of the "1189"'s in the following pictures are fabric numbers that are sewn on, but the yellow diamonds and sponsor logos are all some kind of laminated sheeting. I think that they might actually be stickers that were sewn on, because we have a ton of look-alikes sitting in a folder in our shop that are definitely stickers.

2007:


2008:



For the past few years, our robot designs haven't allowed us to use fabric coverings. 2009 didn't need it - we had a lexan-aluminum-and-zip-ties robot. This year we needed a hard surface to serve as a ball deflector, so we painted a piece of regolith yellow (it was last minute!), and plastered sponsor stickers all over the frame and the regolith. Stickers work well, as long as they're either sewn to something or attached to a hard surface.


(...this post coming from the team with 3 spirit awards and 3 imagery awards)

[Kims Robot]

Spray paint! (and camo bumpers!)
Last year, 1511 had a contact that offered to powdercoat parts for us, but it was a 4 hour round trip drive, and the process took a while. Our drivetrain got done, but in the rush to finish the rest of the robot, we didnt have time, so we tried metal spraypaint, and it worked beautifully!

Flash forward to this year, and we again used red & black spraypaint, and coupled that with a crazy camo mesh hand painted by one of our mentors! Version 2 of the robot was a metal mesh with some more spray paint.

Its not quite as fancy or pretty as annodizing or powdercoating, but it works well to have a pretty distinguished, non-aluminum looking robot.

[Kibaspirit]

I prefer the robots that look like they were made with hardly any time or funding. If the robot doesn't look good, people don't expect much and when it does well, people will be more impressed. With powder coated and nice looking robots, people mentally expect them to do better and if they don't preform well, people will be surprised.

I totally agree! Our robots don't always look the best, but, especially this year, we have had no issues. It doesn't matter how a robot looks. If it doesn't work, what does it matter what it looks like?

Fabricated robots are nice, but we wonder where other teams find the time for that.
(We only have 9 students)

[Andrew Remmers]

Gota sell that sizzle! Personally I think that if your robot is more recognizable and rememberable (along with your team) it will be more rememberable to other teams for time to come. For 4 years now 1902 has have (what I think) very nice looking robots. We have a great sponsor who powder-coats it for us. However If you look at some of our parts; since we do not have a crazy amount of machining capability for cheap, we hand fabricate alot of our parts. If you take this years robot for example, we have an Aluminum tubing superstructure that mounts our hanging mechanism, and gives rigidity to our robot. There was no weight to powder-coat it so we wire brushed this part to give it that really nice Aluminum finish.

That is a little bit of what Exploding Bacon does

Hope this helps!!

[Wayne Doenges]

How do you make your robot look good?

One word.........MONOCOQUE

[Enigma's puzzle]

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

How do you make your robot look good?

One word.........MONOCOQUE

I have to admit your thrust robots are some of the coolest and best looking robots around, but i personally do not have the patience to build robots like that, but more power to you.


The biggest part of building a good looking robot i would have to say is for the selection process, if your robot looks like it is way too open, or some sort of extremity looks like it snaps off the first time it gets hit, I'm looking at your robot with caution. and in any spots where you have near equal talent compared to another team, they will get the edge because they look more durable.

1) So cover your main body of your robot, and if it looks good below the cover then make a clear material.
2) make sure any parts that you can see outside your main body look reliable and rugged.
3) Straight cuts, centered bolt holes, etc. Just keep it looking clean cut, unless that is the functionality of course.
4) Any sort of numbers or letters meant to be displayed should be stenciled, or machine cut, if at all possible! It really looks better.

[Nick Lawrence]

Close attention to detail, paint, and shiny parts! Also, graphics are nice too.

http://picasaweb.google.com/patfair/...36141225772242

-Nick

[Alex Cormier]

I much prefer some twin wall lexan with some metallic paint and good looking vinyl decals.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/34981
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/21742

[s_forbes]

As others have said, a high attention to detail and added decals will make your robot look good.

If you want your robot to look beautiful, you need to take appearance into account in the beginning and design your robot around aesthetically pleasing shapes and elegant curves that are both functional and graceful. (like this for example)

[Wayne Doenges]

All kidding aside, I've seen too many robots that are very pleasing to the eye but their wiring is atrocious. Spend some time routing your wires in straight lines and use some type of bundling to hold them together (zip ties, string etc...)

[Rick Wagner]

Good driving and an awesome autonomous mode makes any robot look good on the field.

[sircedric4]

This is my 5th year of mentoring, but when me and my fellow mentor started with the new team we were on, we recognized that a consistent image and a painted robot really does make a huge difference in your perceived competency.

There's something about taking the time to make your robot look good that also says you took the time to make sure your robot performed good. Granted the design you chose may not have been optimum, but at least you do what you set out to do.

We went with a consistent color scheme and a consistent mascot or feature that you will see on 2992's robots, we hope, for years to come.

2009 Robot "Dante"


2010 Robot "Chester"



It was as simple as a coat of paint and a plastic panel that makes all the difference in the world. Oh and of course we always put our hat on the robot somewhere. :-)

[Siri]

Powder coating is great if you can get it, but a decent spray paint job can also do wonders. It's great for us amateur welders and really works if got a decent paintable vertical surface area. The last factor was an issue for many teams I saw this year, with the tunnel height (if they opted for the capability) and regulated bumper colors. This can take some forethought, and I certainly wouldn't recommend sacrificing functionality (hence the issue this season). It's worth consideration though, if not for your image than for sponsor logo visibility.

Another trick is to look durable, in both designed form and fabrication. Rack 'n Roll sticks in my head for this one. As a drive team, we'd rather not go up ramps that looked like they couldn't hold our operator console, much less our robot. It applies to every season, though. If you look durable and effective (hopefully at least in part because you are ), people will remember it.

The other tactic that comes to mind is consistency--over your robot/team/pit/logo/mascot/etc and over the years. We changed our shirts pretty drastically basically every year until last season trying to find something we liked and that was decently unique. I think we found it, and I'm glad we kept going until we did, but I did see the impact on scouting/name recognition during the earlier years.

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

All kidding aside, I've seen too many robots that are very pleasing to the eye but their wiring is atrocious. Spend some time routing your wires in straight lines and use some type of bundling to hold them together (zip ties, string etc...)

And label them!