[moderated] pic: The 2006 NiagaraFIRST Triplets!

[Holtzman]

In regards to the technical questions about the robots, here are the details....

4 Small Cim drive with a pair of AndyMark Shifters gives us 4.6ftps and 11.8 ftps in low and high gear respectively.
Treads from Brecoflex keep us planted firmly on the carpet.
2 FP's into Dewalts, direct drive to 8 inch Skyways for the launcher.
2 Globes(with 1 stage removed) run the ball lift from the hopper to the basket.
2 window's handles the intake.
And 1 van door runs our highly advanced and secret anti ball jam device.

In regards to Conor's specific questions...

Look at the PVC on the hoppers! Thats pretty cool I like how you guys can both pick balls up off the ground and throw them in. But could you enlighten us how the balls get from inside the robot up into the shooter?

Balls simply roll down the ramp in our hopper into the feed for the lift. Our anti jam device stops jams in the bottle neck to the lift.

Anyone besides 1680 using the camera?

All the robots will eventually get them on. They just didn't get them on in time for the picture.

When did you take this picture, and how long was it until you had your first robot built and working?

Picture was taken the day before ship at our practice facility. We had the practice robot functional in week 3, but several revisions were made to the final competition robots.

Does collaborative build take longer than a single team's build?

The actual build does take longer, but you save time in fabrication.

That being said, could 1114 build a better robot without the collaboration? Yes, but at this time, neither 1503 nor 1680 has the design or the programming resources to design and program their own competitive robots. It is for this reason that they are still a part of the collaboration. Perhaps in the future, when they have established more of their own resources, they will be able to venture off on their own.