In a bugeting mistake on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon accedentally bought The Red Tulip for 2 million dollars. It is now seeing action in Iraq, autonomously changing lightbulbs on Iraqi highways
Well, on the down side, I’m not sure what good the lightbulbs are going to do with the current power grid issues in Iraq, but on the bright side, it looks like fundraising won’t be an issue for your team anymore! 
What was the robots job? 
haha I was just curious.
-Kyle
This reminds me of a great idea. How about a FIRST yearbook, where each robot has a picture, and a “most likely to …” line. That might be fun.
“Team 195’s robot, most likely to… sit in a room and never be used again, then be stripped for parts next build season”
639 waaay too liberal for that to ever happen, Kev. Nice try! 
Frankly, I dont care if our team is liberal or not.
Oh it definitely would 
Team 1159’s 2004 bot would be commandeering a pirate ship ;D
Team 648 “most likely to… take over the world with it’s hook of doom.” :yikes:
Team 759 “most likely to… drown trying to get to america with its overweight lifting arm”
"Team 33… mostly likely to join the NBA "
Oh yeah. That’d be sweet. I’ll see if 617 can start that at the Nasa/VCU regional as a fundraiser - pics are free of your robot, and the book, maybe, I don’t know, $20US?
That’s one eluva fundraiser! 
Team 246… most likely to fall over and not work… whoops 
Most likely to make overly complicated robot where half the features are scraped during the first competition (a.k.a. the winch of extraordinary irritation)
Dude, sabre? Epee here! You have fallen to the dark side![/digression]
come to think of it, FIRST robots could be useful in Iraq, there are plenty of FIRST robots made up of enough 1/4" plate to armor a humvee…
But I doubt any FIRST robot could survive a combat situation there. And if they’re doing simple stuff like light bulbs then why buy them for 2 million? A soldier doesn’t make that much in his entire life.
Spam’s “SAM” has been over there since the end of competition last year. sadly, with no air threat to speak of, SAM (Surface to Air Meat) has had little to do save charge his pneumatics.
From the original thread posted on 9/26/04, I now add the following thoughts:
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Look at the original photo AGAIN. The BIGGER tank is actually our rookie robot coming after yours (ha, ha). Oh, ok that’s not part of “gracious professionalism…”
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Since I work for a military contractor, so thoughts about what makes a FIRST robot different than a military robot:
—In the military, the robots are called UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles) and are used for cave exploration, urban combat in buildings, etc.
—In FIRST, you know exactly what the “battlefield” looks like; UGVs don’t have that luxury and have to “feel” their way along uncharted territory. Glad you don’t have to do that programming?
—In FIRST, you know exactly who and where your “enemy” is. Combat UGVs don’t have that luxury. Anything can happen at any time.
—In FIRST, your robot can’t be offensively “shot at”. In a combat UGV, the vehicle has to be both offensive and defensive. Weighs a lot more than 100 lbs too.
—In FIRST, you have a predefined mission (grab & stack tetras). In a combat UGV, you may receive new instructions in real-time which changes the robot’s mission
—In FIRST, nobody will be jamming your wireless radio transmission to the robot. In combat, you have to assume that you will be jammed.
—In FIRST, you have minimal feedback from the robot (feelers, touch plates, streaming video). In combat, your robot will indeed be OUT OF SIGHT all the time. Makes for a fun video gaming exercise.
Lastly, war robots and war in general is NOT fun. In FIRST, make sure you have FUN…and pray for the soldiers and robots that are fighting around the world for us.
So is it like the Mars rovers, where there’s someone controlling them from mission control? I assume so. But do you have backup programming, and if so, what?