pic: Robot in 3 Days: Complete

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by dodar

This is an amazing looking robot and seemed to function extremely well. I wonder, though, will teams look at teams who build a very similar robot to this ,as if they just recreated this robot, in a different view? Even though I do believe that this concept has been thought of by a lot of teams and even i thought of something very similar to this before this was a finished product.

A lot of robots in Rebound Rumble looked the same and all performed the same tasks, but there were certain characteristics robots had irrelevant to the surface of the primary objective. Sure, 341 had a hooded shooter like a lot of other teams, but they also had a ridiculous center of gravity, excellent programming, and a really efficient drop down intake. The only major exception would be Bomb Squad, who built a catapult when everyone was building a shooter and they also had a drive train that could embarrass teams like mine.

This is a robot that could be carbon copied and probably significantly boost what will otherwise be a low average alliance regional qualification round match score, but there's plenty of room for improvement for the drive train (I believe 16 says it's the first, second, and third most important thing involved in being successful in competition), vision targeting and automation of parts of the loader and launcher, iteration of the loader/launcher combination to build something more compact or faster, playing with the gears on the shooter, playing with the gap on the shooter, a more advanced climbing mechanism that can attain more endgame points, articulating the shooter, and of course, anodizing it black for better performance.

And that's what my woefully under-qualified midnight brain came up with on the spot.

For what it's worth (which is next to nothing), I encourage any team unsure of where to start to copy elements of this robot, but they should be pushing themselves to make the final product better than something built in 3 days.

Thank you for this community service, guys!