How do you feel toward you robot?

[Not2B]

I think everyone has something they would change on the robot. You now have seen other options, other ideas, other ways to implement things... I'm SURE you've learned something new by looking at other's robots. It's not a bad thing to want to make changes, or think someone else has a REALLY cool way of doing something. It's natural. For me... I wish we had spent more time thinking about using belts instead of rollers for ball feeds. But oh well. We have rollers, and we'll make them work.

So Love your robot, and it will love you.

[Josh Murphy]

nobody can really put thier bot down until they see it in action. you spend all this time on it and you guys are putting some of your machines down. i spent many hours a week on this project and i am proud of our machine whether it is as competitive as i want it to be or not so don't give up yet there is still hope.

[Chriszuma]

How did you feel about this year's robot?

I'm an engineering type. I don't have feelings.

[Schneidie]

I am a newbie, and I love our robot.IT' together and working. I look forward to our 2 regionals.

I don't think that our bot is as (for lack of a better word) finished as it could have been. By the ship date, we were still a little unsure about certain characteristics of the bot and whether we should change them.

heck we'll probably be making major changes to it at the competition....but I still have a decent amount of faith in it.

[lukevanoort]

I really like this year's robot as compared to previous years. We may not be powder coated or anodized, but the robot is still good looking (comparatively speaking). It has zero wood on it (for the first time ever) and is mostly plexiglass and aluminum. A little tin (yes tin, I'm not kidding) made it on as well as bright yellow polycord. If we get it mounted at VCU, we'll have a pimp fan (it's spraypainted silver and looks like a hunk of metal due to bad spraypaint), we have huge aluminum 54 tooth AM sprockets, and our electricals are nice and hidden. (they're sandwiched between our ball pickup and our hopper) The drivetrain is the best we've ever made (KOP gearbox, 5.7 ft/s, 6WD), and everything was tested before ship. (Not counting 2003 when we were literally a box on wheels, our first time ever) Intrestingly, this team is one of the smallest, with most of the robot work done by five (two of whom don't attend every day, and two students who always come in a but late) along with two mentors, a Chemist and an Industrial Engineer.

[Joe_Widen]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

How did you feel about this year's robot? What isn't finished? What are its strengths? Weeknesses?

Me.. Its my final year FIRST as a high school student and I feel a bit disappointed to tell you the truth. We decided to be 'weird' and go with a pneumatic shooter. It is DEAD ON accurate +- 6 inches at the most, but the ROF is approx only one per second due to our hopper design which was almost an afterthought. At one point we had 3 differnt people building three seperate designs.

The camera tracking works, but its too slow for my tastes. I never got the time to tune my PID loops. I have all the bits and pieces of autonomous working but nothing has been tried all together even once. Also, at the competition i am going to have to generate a table of shooter angles vs camera angle to target.

The drivetrain is your typical 4wd using the kit trannies and a pretty low ratio so nothing special there.

I feel like i have wasted the last 6 weeks of my life after seeing all the other robot pics. I suppose i should look on the bright side, It was an AWESOME journey to get here.

I was really excited about programming this year. I was finally going to have a chance to show off my stuff and mess wiht PID, vision systems etc on a FIRST robot. Well, since our other programmer graduated last year, found that up until 3 days before ship i was soo tied up with mechanical things that i did not write a single line of code. It all works(in theory ) but i fear we will not get our more than say 6 balls in auto.

I'm sure that all sounded rather rambly and disorganized. If other people feel positively about their robot i would love to hear their story. What is life like on other teams?

What regionals are you going to? If you come to team 1675 pits, our programmer designed an awesome program that records autonomous. We're going to Buckeye and the Wisconsin Regional. If you email me back, I can talk to the mentor about getting you the program if your team isnt going to a regional we are. I hope this works out for you and I feel your pain. But all you can do is be proud of what you did. This is FIRST and everyone is here to work together. I would love to help your team in anyway I can assist you. If you need anything, give Team 1675 a holler, and we'll be glad to help. Email me if your not attending one of our regionals. If i dont talk back to you, good luck to your team and every team. Cant wait for the fun to begin!!!!!!!

[Andrew Blair]

I feel rather mixed, as usual. The thing has a solid drive, one that is fairly gaurenteed to be reliable, but the rest of it was pieced on top of itself. Build the in roller, build the feed roller, build the shooter, tear down the shooter, redesign... It's kind of a partially functioning mess. Looking from the other side of the fence however, it's problems are really quite fixable. Our first practice day will be a nightmare. Our need to build the best robot ended up with the best ideas, but not time enough or stability to build it properly. The first regional will tell all...

What he said...lol

This is the first year I've been feeling so-so about our robot. I guess its because this year I've been the most dedicated, taken the most responsibility and did the most work out of my 4 years on the team.

Its really weird that I feel this way, as it seems to be the exact opposite of the previous replies. Its scary, knowing that what I did in those 6 weeks effects our performance at competition. Nothing in my entire life has ever been more important to me.

During build, we have had to make compromises due to the time limitations and I feel like we're in the mid-range of our potential. Somehow, while we where shipping the robot, I had an overwhelming sense of guilt, that I let my team down. We could accomplish so much, yet we shipped a robot that did not meet my expectations.

I really want to dissolve this mindset, I wonder if anyone has any advice to overcome this?

[Dan Petrovic]

Our robot could definately be better.

If you don't have your camera aiming your shooter, then you're in trouble. In our first practice match we fell over and our Horizonal Aiming was busted. In our last practice match our camera got busted, yet we still scored a bunch of balls by eye.

We go into the qualification rounds today thinking we can score a lot.

Out of around 70 shots made today, we scored one.

I'm extremely happy with every component on our robot. The rollers suck up balls in the blink of an eye, the storage keeps them from getting clogged, and the shooter is the most consistant thing I've ever seen, however, in competition we can't do anything. We can push. We have strong two speed transmissions with four wheel drive so that keeps us from being completely useless.

We are making big changes starting tomorrow and hopefully finishing during the Practice rounds of Nationals. Scrapping the shooter and turning our robot strictly into a side scoring bot. We are still keeping every thing we take off for demonstration purposes. Flying balls are much more interesting than rolling balls.

It's an amazing robot. An accurate shooter, fast rollers, and smooth storage, but in competition we can't use any of that.

[phrontist]

This is the best robot we've ever built. Last year's was a great machine, but didn't really play the game too well (well, in the offeseason it did...). The year before we were clueless (but enthusiastic!) and had no hope of getting anywhere. This year, we were more organized and purposeful in our work than ever before.

As far as what you're describing:

I've been there, I think we all have. But you can take comfort in knowing that you fought the good fight (Unless you didn't, but I'm sure you did...) and everything that robot has or doesn't have is the direct result of your efforts. FIRST hasn't really taught me a great deal technically, but it has taught me a lot about working with other people and the discipline and organization required to work efficiently. So try to look on the bright side, or the ambiguous possibilities of the future!

Failing that, take solace in having come up with a great thread topic.

[akshar]

i know i have already posted, but for some reason, i can not edit my old post so here it goes:

i saw our bot perform today and all i can say is: different
Regit was built to shoot, very inconsistent, so we play defense, and we are THE best, so how do i feel about my robot? Regit is the best and i wouldnt trade him for any other robot

[rachal]

Finding out the shooter didn't work after finally getting to test the day before ship wasn't so fun. (Tiny range, and the balls just flopped to the side sometimes.)

Redesigning, building, and testing it by the end of the next day -- and finding out that it was about an order of magnitude more accurate and powerful -- WAS pretty fun.

[Rick TYler]

Well... we just went 3-7 at PNW, and the 8th place alliance picked a BLT* over us to be their third and final alliance partner, so this isn't a good time to talk about your question.

* Brave Little Toaster -- a kitbot with no game systems at all. A box on wheels. In this case, a box on wheels that lasted about 1-1/2 minutes of the first Finals match before dropping a transmission and a big handful of chain on the ground. We posted up against the best bots in our tournament for ten matches without anything breaking and a BLT is chosen instead of use. Six-wheel-drive, 4x4 aluminum square tube frame, drives up the ramp at any angle, occasionally scores the center goal in auto, and we get left at home while a transmission-coughing toaster goes to the prom. But I'm not bitter. Really. Just wait 'til next year. (Yes, I am a lifelong Dodger fan -- can you tell?).