pic: 2006 HOTBOT

[pakrat]

All of this is speculation until they tell us but:
Loader:
Genius hopper deisgn with a damping backboard that flips completely parallel to the ground for easy human shots. Also note the nicely machined part at the bottom of the hopper for feeding one ball only while agitating the other balls to avoid getting clogged.

Shooter:
Seems like some sort of wheel at the bottom that launches something up the ramp with an angle condusive to launching things from any up to 25 feet away fairly accurately. There will be plenty of spin on the ball too (some people speculated that spin will help keep the path of the ball straight) if that makes any sense. Also, a turret on that shooter to maximize scoring oppurtunities.

Drive: looks like a lot of chain, which i have noticed in many strong teams this year. Very red wheels, but i cant tell anything about it besides that from this piture on this monitor.

other notes:
The light sensor that is used to (i suspect) sense the speed of the wheel and change that speed depending on how close to the goal you are.

The presence of a camera close to the shooter to aid in aiming the shooter turret with some awesome code ill guess.

The surprising lack of ability to floor load and as far as i can tell, floor score.

IMHO, this will be a very interesting robot to watch, and its interesting to see HOT playing stong to one suit when im used to them interacting with every game element in almost every way possible. Still gonna be a great robot