pic: Introducing 190's M.O.H. Goat

[Madison]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

That is one doozy of an arm. I assume that you guys are locking on to the pipe very well in order to keep yourself from swinging. This is very impressive.

Kudos to 190!

Andy B.

Andy, I think that the opposite is true. For the robot to operate optimally, you'd want for it to be free-swinging about the horizontal bar.

You can see that it's tilted away from vertical in that photo, also noting that the arm is at its full extension. Were it to grab a ball and rotate over the top, the rest of the chassis would act as a counterweight, swinging back to vertical and then away to other side, dynamically counteracting the torque exerted by the arm and ball around the horizontal bar.

It's an elegant solution to a reasonably complex problem. It's not the only solution, of course, but I'd say it's the best. It places the center of gravity in a place much lower than the horizontal bar, minimizing the chance for the robot to spin around or otherwise mess up its orientation to the Earth.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

...And then she reminds me that she was a Mass Academy student, and it turns out she was on your email list for forever, and recieved a free tshirt. And she knew Ken Stafford (in a "duh, who doesn't know Ken Stafford?!?" type of way).

In that case, you might want to show her this picture, taken at about 4:30am.

[Ryan Dognaux]

Wow guys, great looking bot!! Can't wait to see it in action at Arizona

[ColleenShaver]

Originally Posted by Andy Baker

I assume that you guys are locking on to the pipe very well in order to keep yourself from swinging.

M. Krass was right... swinging is something we do do quite a bit of :-)

It'll take a little extra operator practice, but it shouldn't be hard to handle at all. So we think. It will take some M.O.H. (Magic Occurs Here) though!

Thanks for all the compliments everyone! We've seen many a great bot on this forum.. it's gonna be a good year!

[Spikey]

WOW, I'm scared. My team can cap and uncap while hanging, but we cannot cap both goals, or decide once we are hanging, very nice job guys that is impressive.

[EvanG]

I had the honor of getting an early viewing of this robot, but it was incompleted at the time. I must say, I am very impressed with how it turned out. That is the kind of innovative thinking that makes creative winners out of FIRST students.

[The Lucas]

Great video. I wish more local stations would give thier teams coverage. Are they correct in saying your 14 foot bot is only 120 lbs? Or is that mistake by the reporters? The media always messes up something about our team. I still remember the local news show that said M.O.E. stands for "Miracle Of Science" (It actually stands for "Miracle Of Engineering)

[WernerNYK]

We are in fact 130 pounds, but can probably reach 14 feet high, so that part was accurate. At one point we were 120 pounds and could still reach as high, but weight has since been added

[Tyler Olds]

Incredible! This was the other way I envisioned a team to win the competition (besides our own). Looks very efficient and robust. Good luck, I am sure you will do well.

[Jnadke]

I'd imagine you could send the 2x ball into orbit with a trebuchet of that size...


Oh... that's a robot? 'Coulda fooled me


Just don't swing that arm around too fast or you might really send that ball flying...