pic: Robot in 3 Days: Complete

[splatter]

Wow looks really good for 3 days !

[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!

[lerikson]

The games every year are starting to resemble past games, although the game and design committee is starting to be smart about it. Only using the past pieces of the games to help us enhance our engineering skills with the advancement of technology every year. For instance this year's climbing is similar to the part of the game "Breakaway" from the 2010 season. Only a select amount of students will remember or be around to notice that figuring FRC teams are made up of high school students who move on to college after 4 years. The ones who do remember or were around help the new kids with their designs in order to best fit the competition. I feel as if this is a very great idea. As soon as the game was revealed I had thought of two different shooting designs, one being the skeet shooter type release and the other being the exact shooter this robot here possess. This is a spectacular robot and I hope to get to see it in person very soon, however with these videos and designs going viral in the FRC community I believe teams will create designs in relation to this robot but will expand the ideas considering they have 6 weeks and didn't aim for 3 days. Good Luck, great bot, and hope everyone is having fun!

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[Doug Leppard]

Fantastic. A great robot in three days.

Now back in the 1902 days when we worked together, why didn't we have a robot in three days (a little jab here)? Man what the programming team and driving team could have done with 5 weeks.

Let this be a hint to the hardware teams. Deliver that robot early and give the software and driving team time with the robot. IR3 has proven it can be done.

Again fantastic job.

[Trez]

Does Robot In Three Days actually compete? I wondering because the people working on this are not high schoolers and it's in the rules that a high school student must drive in the competition. If not then the point of Robot In Three Days is to just educate and entertain?

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Trez

Does Robot In Three Days actually compete? I wondering because the people working on this are not high schoolers and it's in the rules that a high school student must drive in the competition. If not then the point of Robot In Three Days is to just educate and entertain?

It will not compete in any official competitions, and is in fact not fully FIRST legal (they used the Canipede for their controller instead of the FRC mandated cRIO, among other things). You are correct, their purpose was to educate (and entertain along the way), and help teams understand what is possible in this year's game, understand a bit about the design and strategy process and help inspire all teams. I highly recommend you check out the full complement of YouTube videos, they explain their purpose, and provide a lot of great information.

[miketwalker]

We've gone ahead and written a recap post documenting the build, pictures of various components, lessons learned, and tips for you guys going forward in your build season. Good luck, everyone!

[DampRobot]

Completing a robot in 3 days is amazing, for any group of people. But do keep in mind that these were highly experienced mentors, who have a lot of a better sense of "what works" than the average group of high schoolers. Also, they had a shop with all of the right tools, and all the time they wanted (well, for three days). And they didn't need to worry about cost, or some FRC rules (bumpers, etc.)

This was an amazing, inspiring, and eye-opening project. Just don't expect this to be done in a similar amount of time by a group of less knowledgeable or well equipped people. A week, maybe, but not three days.

Please don't turn this into a "student built vs. mentor built" thread...

Oh, yeah, and I think Corry's right. This robot could easily become an alliance captain, at least at some regionals.

[Teamcodeorange]

Fantastic! Thanks for doing this, I am sure it has given hope to many teams.

[Jim Wilks]

Great job!

An excellent resource to many teams.

[jwallace15]

Good job guys! It looks great!