What was the coolest thing on your bot this year. For us it was the latex tubing keeping our arm from coming out of it’s footprint and the two stage chassis.
Tough call, but I personally like the freaky chain path that was devised by our chassis team this year. It only fell off once, early in the first of our two regionals, but afterwards I think the team got a good idea of how tight to make the chains so that it works.
I can’t pick one, but I would have to say our switch to change Hybrid modes. We set it to knock the trackball down w/ robocoach help, do laps, or do a little of both. We mostly did the first one. We had flippers to had flippers to help herd the ball around (AKA shin busters). Then we used car epoxy to hold the frame together and it worked GREAT.
I loved our drivetrain this year (granted, there wasn’t much else to the robot), but my favorite thing about Speedy Debris is the electrical panel. After a bad connection at the distribution block cost us the quarterfinal round at Palmetto in 2007 (and, admittedly, just not liking how we wired Uppercut), we resolved to step our game up for 2008. The new panel has far shorter wire runs, sits lower, is more compact, and is easier to troubleshoot. Oh, and it’s not on a part of the robot that’ll come loose and start flapping around. 
The final revision of our paws mechanism. It encircled the 300 degrees of the ball, got 2-3 hurdles/match at its peak in Atlanta (needed more practice tbh), and I didn’t see anything like at the competitions I went to. Oh yea, and the purple on them helped the elegant aesthetics of the bot too.
Hm…I would have to say our pool noodles. Knocked the balls down 100% of the times. And, to keep them down, we had them bent forward, under our forks, and so when the forks fell down, then our pool noodles went up.
Or it could be the picture of Dean Kamen we put on our pool noodles…I dunno…you pick.
Pictures, please!
The coolest thing on our robot was our elevation system coupled with our aquesition it enabled Xtender to be one of the top offensive robots for 2008.
In my opinion, the coolest thing on 1511’s bot was our bumpers! They were made out of recycled team pants. We had a problem buying our supply of red camo fabric so we got permission to cut up our old cargo pants and use the fabric. Our seamstress extraordinaire pieced them together (reinforced seams and all) and then recut the fabric for the bumpers!
Here is Shelley and her pile of pants!
http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/gallery/4220727_5jMWJ#253956674_oKJtS-A-LB
and our robot with its bumpers! http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com/gallery/4220730_Zo3s7#256628721_DeMSx-A-LB
http://www.rutherfordcontrols.com/products/product.asp?ProductID=104&zone=can
Two big honkin’ Electro-magnets!
Probablly the coolest thing in this year’s robot is the robot functions. It actually THROWS the ball like a “over-the-head pass” in soccer, instead of pushing or rolling the ball over the overpass. and it’s not a shooter.
The use of Juggling rings as our gripper.
Our coolest thing was definitely our independent suspensions. We only did this because we used mecanum wheels this year. Each suspension was extremely easy to detach which made quick repairs a breeze. It really helped when I decided to crash our robot into the block at the end of the lane dividing wall, as shown in picture 2. These suspensions also helped us win the Rockwell award.
And our cast aluminum roller claw wheels cast in the shop’s foundry using the accumulated scrap from team machining mistakes - they live on to serve a useful purpose. Huzzah.
I remember seeing that coaching 195 that match.
the worm gears to raise the arm or…the dong!
I would have to say besides our drivesystem, it would defintely be the kicker underneath the claw that we used to kick the ball foward over the overpass, it was shaped like a high heel and was just a comical/cool looking part of the robot.
our linkage drive! Pretty much for how new of a system it is, it kept up with everyone on the field (it even matched 1114 for some of the time :D)
I love our linkage!!
That is cool! What a fun idea!