Crazy Robot Inspection Stories

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by FRC4ME

Would you mind posting a link to that picture (or a similar one)? My team's electronics layout sucked this year - when a relay failed, we simply added a new one because the old one was impossible to access - and I need to show them an example of how to do it right.

I can't find a great picture of the 2007 iteration, but here is a thread about the 2005 version (note this post about the 2007 version). And here you can see it in the 2007 robot, and here you can see it unfolded (before the wires were fully cleaned up).

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

Annapolis Aim High game. One kid shows up with the kitbot in pieces. We got him running.

This happened at Portland this year. They showed up with the kitbot. The SWAT kids and a bunch of other students spent all of Thursday building this robot, which actually ended up doing pretty well.

[pakratt1991]

Originally Posted by ErichKeane

This happened at Portland this year. They showed up with the kitbot. The SWAT kids and a bunch of other students spent all of Thursday building this robot, which actually ended up doing pretty well.

I was one of those SWAT members, They showed up weighing under 65 pounds and didn't even ship the robot, they just carried it in to the competition. I was waiting on them to hand them their schedule of practice matches and when they finally arrived I saw that the batter connector wasn't connected to the battery.

I asked them how it was supposed to run and the student there said that it ran great if you connected the motors directly to the leads of the battery...

The mentor had only brought 3 students because he read that was the maximum amount of students allowed to compete.

Thanks to an insane mount of help from Volunteers, local teams. I'd have to look back at the pictures to see which teams exactly were helping, I know 997, and 488, and the team across from them in the pits, this was a high number team, three thousand something, the name and number are still not coming to me. After many hours and more than a few trips to the machine shop they did end up competing and winning the rookie inspiration award.

[ErichKeane]

Originally Posted by pakratt1991

I was one of those SWAT members, They showed up weighing under 65 pounds and didn't even ship the robot, they just carried it in to the competition. I was waiting on them to hand them their schedule of practice matches and when they finally arrived I saw that the batter connector wasn't connected to the battery.

I asked them how it was supposed to run and the student there said that it ran great if you connected the motors directly to the leads of the battery...

The mentor had only brought 3 students because he read that was the maximum amount of students allowed to compete.

Thanks to an insane mount of help from Volunteers, local teams (I'd have to look back at the pictures to see which teams exactly were helping, I know 997, and 488, and the team across from them in the pits... Another high three thousand something team,) and the machine shop they did end up competing and winning the rookie inspiration award.

Correct! I was with the neighbors to the left (3210). I looked over a few times to see if they needed anything, but there were always a dozen+ people there! I was very impressed with how they did, but more so with the amount of people who helped out. Definitely GP at its finest.

[sparrowkc]

In 2007, our rookie year, somebody donated a 400 foot roll of green 14 gauge wire. We used it every place we could, including for four runs through our 5 foot arm. When our inspector said that the wire didn't meet the color coding requirements, we produced the rule he was referring to and pointed out that it only applied to wires on the input terminals of the speed controllers. He then decided that green wire wasn't allowable because green usually stands for ground. As a rookie team, we didn't know to escalate the problem to the lead inspector, and ended up rewiring the whole robot on practice day. Another team donated the ~50 feet of red and black wire. I wish we remembered which team that was so that we could thank them...

This was also the year that we assumed fitting in the sizing box meant fitting in the sizing box, not sitting in the sizing box without touching any of the walls. That was fun.

[Just a Mom]

We had bright yellow painted numbers on our bumpers because we had a nice mom who was happy to work with two students to do the numbering. The problem turned out to be that they were over 1/2 inch wide but not 3/4 inch wide. You also can't have two colors so we couldn't just make them wider with a sharpie. The mom felt so bad that she drove an hour to the school got the paint, drove an hour back and made the numbers bigger. Hope she still volunteers next year. I know the rules are clear but no one caught the mistake.

Another team put on numbers from the hardware store. They were black and white and really easy to read. You can't have two colors so they had to take the numbers off, cut off all the white and put the numbers back on. At least the numbers were black so they could make them wider with a sharpie. Without the contrast it was hard to see them on the blue but they met the rules.

[jblay]

Last year at NYC one team showed up with their KOP and a bunch of plywood. They refused to accept the help of us or any other team because they believed that every team was out to get them. They did however borrow a circular saw from one team.

Their mentor was cutting plywood with the circular saw and did not realize that the wire was on top of the piece of wood. When the saw stopped running he became very confused. The team who the saw was burrowed from was upset to say the least.

By the end of the day they had a drive train with some wooden thing on top that didn't really do anything but hold the balls in the bot the entire match. When they went to get their robot inspected I saw piles of saw dust in their pit, it was quite a site.

[Marc P.]

At the NYC Regional this year, 2836's robot was fully assembled for the first time Thursday morning. First thing we did was throw it on the inspection scale- 124.1 pounds. We had anticipated being ~5 pounds overweight, and had the materials on hand to replace a number of steel pillow blocks and idler shafts with aluminum spares. All told, we ended up at 119.8 pounds in time for our first qualification match.

Over the course of the day, we tweaked a few things, adding and subtracting little parts here and there. To be prepared for the impending elimination match re-inspection Sunday, we weighed in again Saturday night (this being a Fri-Sat-Sun regional), and again were at 119.8.

So Sunday rolls around, and we make it to the elimination rounds. Being as far behind schedule as they were, event officials called for elimination robots to be quickly re-inspected- meaning a quick once over, and weight to be checked with batteries and bumpers installed.

The idea was, take the total weight of the robot, subtract the recorded weight for the bumpers (from the original inspection), and subtract a standard weight for the battery (something like 13.3 pounds). With bumper and "battery" weight subtracted, our robot was calculated to be 121.4 pounds.

Not understanding how we suddenly gained 1.6 pounds, I instructed our students to quickly remove the bumpers. Subtracting the "battery" weight still landed us at 121.4 pounds. I unplugged and removed the battery, and the scale fluctuated between 119.9 and 120.0 pounds.

Lesson learned- battery weight isn't always standard, especially if you have a decent length of 6 gauge wire with the Anderson connector attached.

[Zach Purser]

Originally Posted by Just a Mom

We had bright yellow painted numbers on our bumpers because we had a nice mom who was happy to work with two students to do the numbering. The problem turned out to be that they were over 1/2 inch wide but not 3/4 inch wide. You also can't have two colors so we couldn't just make them wider with a sharpie. The mom felt so bad that she drove an hour to the school got the paint, drove an hour back and made the numbers bigger. Hope she still volunteers next year. I know the rules are clear but no one caught the mistake.

Another team put on numbers from the hardware store. They were black and white and really easy to read. You can't have two colors so they had to take the numbers off, cut off all the white and put the numbers back on. At least the numbers were black so they could make them wider with a sharpie. Without the contrast it was hard to see them on the blue but they met the rules.

I thought some of the bumper rules were too strictly enforced this year. Yes, I know the rules are very specific, but some of the things that were being enforced provided no advantage to the team that goofed them. One rule that got us was having the bumper flush with the exterior vertex of the robot. We added a 2" x 2" x 1/8" reinforcing plate to the outside of the frame on the front corners of our robot (we cracked a gusset after a hard landing), and the polycarb attached to the frame also covered the plates. The inspector said that since the polycarb was spaced out another 1/8" over the plates that defined our exterior vertex, so as it was the bumpers needed to move out another 1/8". The solution was simple, we just cut the polycarb that was covering the plates, but it just seemed like such a nitpicky thing.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Just a Mom

Another team put on numbers from the hardware store. They were black and white and really easy to read. You can't have two colors so they had to take the numbers off, cut off all the white and put the numbers back on. At least the numbers were black so they could make them wider with a sharpie. Without the contrast it was hard to see them on the blue but they met the rules.

Are you sure this is a rule? I've seen more than one team run with a white number outlined in black, or a yellow number outlined in black, etc.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Are you sure this is a rule? I've seen more than one team run with a white number outlined in black, or a yellow number outlined in black, etc.

Outlining for contrast purposes is fine, as long as the number itself meets spec. Q&A from last week:http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=15079

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Just a Mom

We had bright yellow painted numbers on our bumpers because we had a nice mom who was happy to work with two students to do the numbering. The problem turned out to be that they were over 1/2 inch wide but not 3/4 inch wide. You also can't have two colors so we couldn't just make them wider with a sharpie. The mom felt so bad that she drove an hour to the school got the paint, drove an hour back and made the numbers bigger. Hope she still volunteers next year. I know the rules are clear but no one caught the mistake.

Another team put on numbers from the hardware store. They were black and white and really easy to read. You can't have two colors so they had to take the numbers off, cut off all the white and put the numbers back on. At least the numbers were black so they could make them wider with a sharpie. Without the contrast it was hard to see them on the blue but they met the rules.

and this is what engineers need to worry about? sounds pretty sad if the rules are that picky

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by pathew100

This year, a mentor walked up to me (inspector) in the pits:

"The team next to us showed up and dropped off their robot and left. It's last year's robot. I remember because we helped them build it here at last year's event."

Sure enough, in their pit was a robot that had slick wheels and a trailer hitch on it....

And... last years bumpers. I remember seeing that this year too, one of 397's parents looked at it and got this confused look on their face.

2008 397 had problems with our launcher pushing our frame out of square. After 2 competitions where we were told that we didn't fit in the box (because the frame was off by 3 degrees) We walked to the inspection box with a hammer. Proud to say we it into the box quite well after a couple good whacks. (For anyone who didn't see that robot, its frame was made of bent 1" square tubing so it actually got unbent quite easily)

Speaking of weird looks, among the strangest looks I have ever gotten in FRC was when our forks in '08 got bent up. Ever see two people jumping on the robot to get the forks back in shape? Yup, it was fun. Turns out I don't weigh enough to do it though.

[czeke]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

and this is what engineers need to worry about? sounds pretty sad if the rules are that picky

I thought it wa vry petty also. Our robot used orange numerals painted over
slighty larger white numerals, at the Wisconsin Reginal. Th inspectors thought that it looked really sharp, but disallowed it, until we painted out the white.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

and this is what engineers need to worry about? sounds pretty sad if the rules are that picky

Exactly! Engineering is about the details. I hope that the engineer in training that will be designing the life support system that will save me in 10 years is a stickler for the details. I don't want the last words I hear to be "Picky Picky Picky."