Most Innovative Teams

[J93Wagner]

2010: We should probably add 148/217 (added?) to the list because they were the first to build and show off the pinch roller design in the pre-season.

[jblay]

Originally Posted by J93Wagner

2010: We should probably add 148/217 (added?) to the list because they were the first to build and show off the pinch roller design in the pre-season.

also their drive train was super awesome

[Nick Lawrence]

1114 in 2008. It was stupid simple.

I thought our belts from last year were pretty innovative.

-Nick

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by Don Wright

2010: 25 for their fan suction device

What made 25's suction different from the other suction devices? I never got a chance to see it close up, but from the webcasts it seemed really effective.

Speaking of suction devices, I think 3362's suction device is innovative for just being super simple. As a small rookie team with limited funding, they took a fan from their room, put a CIM on it and put a plywood (I think) box around it. It was just as, if not more, effect as 111's at Wisconsin. Here is a picture of it: http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/team/3362

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

What made 25's suction different from the other suction devices? I never got a chance to see it close up, but from the webcasts it seemed really effective.

It was actually good. It worked from several inches away, apparently...

[Francis-134]

I'm not sure on all the details of their sucker, but from what I saw and was told to me, it is a pair of impellers (they look similar to model aircraft propellers) on a pair of Fisher Price motors. From what I saw, they cause the ball to come into their robot from a couple feet away. I have never seen a suction device with as much flow as 25's.

[jblay]

Originally Posted by Francis-134

I'm not sure on all the details of their sucker, but from what I saw and was told to me, it is a pair of impellers (they look similar to model aircraft propellers) on a pair of Fisher Price motors. From what I saw, they cause the ball to come into their robot from a couple feet away. I have never seen a suction device with as much flow as 25's.

They also had two idling rollers instead of a cup which I think was a huge part of giving them such a big radius from which they could pick up the ball.

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

Who are the most mechanically innovative teams to pass through FRC? What years and what mechanisms?

My personal experience with other team's robots is limited mostly to New England, but there are a few standouts in my memory from the past few years in the area of mechanical innovations:

2005 - This year, Gael Force (126) built a robot with an awesome robotic arm which very quickly and effectively placed two tetras at a time.

2006 - The Rhode Warriors (121) had a great Archimedes screw-like ball hopper which was a huge rotating turret around a fixed silo. Atop a robust drive train, it made their robot an awesome opponent that year; when they took up a solid position against the ramp, they could simply turn their turret to lock on the goal and fire away!

2008 - Team 121 again came up with a dominating robot in New England -- this time a hurdling design which was much simpler than most, featuring a single-jointed arm (only a shoulder joint) with a combination roller- and spring-claw that made picking up and hurdling balls deceptively simple. Not only did they get this robot ready in time for shipment, but they had it working by the end of week 3, posting videos online of their robot in operation which inspired many other teams (including ours) to come up with very similar designs for their hurdling robots.

2009 - Although not solely a mechanical innovation, Team 40, Checkmate of Trinity High School, conquered one of the most difficult autonomous challenges in FIRST history, being able to score autonomously into moving trailers in Lunacy. They were able to do this through the combination of some incredible autonomous software programming and a sound mechanical system of a turreted shooter atop a swerve drive base. Seeing their robot autonomously hunt down a moving trailer and score into it while driving around the field was incredibly inspiring!

2010 - Although primarily a software innovation and not the first time this has been done, the field-oriented drive system of Team 1058, PVC Pirates, gave them increased control of their robot, making them an outstanding mid-fielder in this year's game.

[JesseK]

2005: I'm a fan of 254's dual-PID arm with simple wrist joint. I didn't really get to see much that year though and that's only from perusing 254's old pictures.

2006: 25's turret, as seen in the behind the design book. The shooter wheels were suspended and allowed the balls to come up from a single point no matter what direction the turret was pointed.

2007 (overall): Gael Force (or Aces High??) for their inside roller claw. It had 2 wheels that spun outward and had high accuracy even with large driver errors when picking up an innertube. It was incredibly simple and very effective. Our Vegas/Atlanta claws were based off of it.

2007 (needs mentioning) 1731's 5-Degree Of Freedom (dof) arm WITH an identical arm used as its controller. This thing was a beast to see in person. The arm was a 2-dof wrist with 1-dof elbow and a 2-dof shoulder joint. The controller was the same thing except it was much smaller and used potentiometers to sense the desired position. The operator only had to move the control model in order to get the arm to respond. For complex movements it had about a 3-second delay, but for simple operations it was very quick.

2007 (drive train): 254/968's introduction of the ultra-light transmission with teflon-impregnated 7068 aluminum gears. 2-3 lbs (?) for a reliable shifting transmission is unheard of.

2008: 1565's "Twitch" drive which led to some pretty innovative control system techniques in 2009. Talk to 48, 1885, and 357 about for what happened in 2009 (though we all had varying levels of success due to implementation). It's essentially a swerve drive limited to two 90 degree states using omni wheels. The rotary action is pneumatic powered, and when all 4 links are independently controlled some whacky things can happen with the center of rotation.

2010: Nonadrive. Hands down, it's hard to believe there's a way to reinvent a skid steer to minimize all of the typical skid steer faults, but 148/217 did it. Granted it's a high maintenance drive train, but iterative design tends to work out all of the kinks. A team with mid-level skills and manufacturing abilities should be able to make a nonadrive from scratch assuming they understand the basics of traction and c.g. This single fact, imo, trumps 1625's complex 6-wheel crab for 'best' innovation in 2010.

I'm also personally a fan of MOE's tensioning and kicking mechanism in 2010 -- an effective motor winch system without the need of a dog gear.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by JesseK

2007 (overall): Gael Force (or Aces High??) for their inside roller claw. It had 2 wheels that spun outward and had high accuracy even with large driver errors when picking up an innertube. It was incredibly simple and very effective. Our Vegas/Atlanta claws were based off of it.

Yup, that was Gael Force (126).

Like Ken, my perspective is decidedly northeastern.

2004: Hyper (69). I don't know who started building robots that sucked, but HYPER mastered it in 2004. They had huge wheels (for some reason, I can't find a good picture of the robot, but if memory serves they had something like a 12" diameter), and an awesome arm. At the end of the arm was a plunger with one heck of a vacuum. Once they had hold of the doubler ball, you were not going go steal it. At BAE in a full speed turn they whacked another robot with the ball, and it didn't budge. They also were excellent hangers. They didn't lose a match all season when their robot was on the field (2 regionals) but they didn't go to Atlanta.

GOMPEI and HERD (190) Autonomous hanging, bar blocking, doubler ball stealing, own goal capping, oh my! One of the coolest robots FIRST has ever seen. At BAE it had a nasty tendency of flipping over in autonomous though.

2005: Gael Force's (126) robot in 2005 sold me on the 6 wheel drive dropped center drive. 190 had a neat robot with field centric drive, and an auto aligning, auto capping arm (all the operator did was press a button for the number of tetras currently stacked and another button to place the tetra), but much like the 2008 robot it never quite worked.

2006: Drawing a blank...

2007: As mentioned before, Gael Force was pretty neat. I liked 40's robot that year as well (what is their team name? Trinity or Checkmate?). I've always loved how they cheese hole everything so nicely, we tried it in 2005 until we realized we always had cheese holes where we wanted to mount things. )

2008: 1519 built two robots for the weight of one! That was pretty neat. Sadly, little Speed Racer never got to compete, and 1519 got an angry Q&A response and the definition of robot changed! How many teams can claim that? 95 also had a nifty robot that year. They fought the backup battery bug, so they only got it working in their final matches of BAE and the elimination matches. They had a fast pickup mechanism and a super fun to watch pneumatic launcher though!

2009: 20's rolling canvas vomiter was fun to watch. They few times they went to vomit and the other robot managed to get away, the crowd response was huge.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by JesseK

2010: Nonadrive. Hands down, it's hard to believe there's a way to reinvent a skid steer to minimize all of the typical skid steer faults, but 148/217 did it. Granted it's a high maintenance drive train, but iterative design tends to work out all of the kinks. A team with mid-level skills and manufacturing abilities should be able to make a nonadrive from scratch assuming they understand the basics of traction and c.g. This single fact, imo, trumps 1625's complex 6-wheel crab for 'best' innovation in 2010.

I'm going to give it to 1625 here... 6 wheel swerve is essentially "the best of both worlds" and doesn't require complicated programming or chaining just to get a zero point turn like most swerve drives. It's also not that much heavier and eliminates the need for transmissions; all reductions are done with chain and a gear reduction on the module. I wanted to see 1625 swerve in front of 469 this year...

[jblay]

I also wanted to add 1114 from 2009 and the way they funneled the balls, it was really creative.

[hillale]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I wanted to see 1625 swerve in front of 469 this year...

There's still IRI

[TEE]

2008: 217 for their... what to call it... claw? Simple, but arguably one of the most effective systems. Also, 27 for the way they picked up the ball (and earlier in the season, I believe they knocked off both of their track balls in autonomous)

2009: 1114 could either shoot straight into an opposing trailer or over the top of an opposing robot into that robot's trailer, at the same speed with a turreted shooter. Also, both 70 and 494 could score all 7 balls in autonomous. 67 for their double-shooter.

2010: 469... need I explain? 33 for their drive train and hanging. 1114 for their hanging- does anyone know how they lifted so fast?!

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by TEE

1114 for their hanging- does anyone know how they lifted so fast?!

They used the power from all 4 drive CIM's, and used that to drive a winch that pulled up the arm. When it was up, a second latch would grip the pole higher up to prevent falling.

We only had 1 CIM for the arm, so we shifted it to second to deploy and back to first to lift.