Favorite 2017 Robots

FIRST General Forum
1

There have been threads on people’s favorite robots of each year, but let’s talk about 2017.

What was your Coolest robot this year?
What was your Most Elegant?
What was your Most Effective?
And what was your favorite Rookie Robot?

My personal ones:
Coolest: 2767 was absolutely incredible to watch play the game of Steamworks. The swerve drive and intake that can suck up both gears and balls was amazing, and their proficiency at all aspects of the game showed in their five-banner season.
Most Elegant: 340 built just the ideal gear robot with an incredible gear intake and wicked-fast placement. Every part of the gear game they did faster than almost everyone else. My runner-up is 4967, who built a top-tier shooting robot with a fixed position shooter that they would re-orient (along with their whole fuel tank) depending on which alliance they were on.
Most Effective: 180’s gear game is stuff of legends, and not because their gear mechanism was somehow that much better, but because of how quick and practiced they were. But the kicker was their absurdly fast climb that let them score gears or play ballsy climb defense until the last possible second.
Best Rookie I didn’t have the opportunity to interact with a ton of rookies this season, but 6490 impressed me a lot when we worked with them at Finger Lakes. They had a simple drivetrain, passive gear mechanism, and a hella consistent climber that earned them a spot as an alliance captain at FLR.

2

Coolest: 125 / 971
Most Elegant: 2767
Most Effective: 195
Best Niche Robot / What We Should Have Built: 558

3

Coolest: Flip a coin between 125 and 971.
Most elegant: 2767’s swerve is the stuff of legend, though watching all the little stuff about 254 on Einstein made me appreciate that machine even more.
Most effective: I’m going to agree with Kevin, 180 was absolutely devastating in Orlando. Wish they’d get to IRI one of these years when they’re on a hot streak!
The Robot We Should’ve Built: 4272. The only robot in 14 years that has made me so mad at myself that I gave myself a cold sore.

(I didn’t get enough face time with rookies either to get blown away by one. Gotta work on that!)

4

Coolest / Most elegant / Most effective: 2767. By the end of the season they ironed out all the kinks and, while there are better pure shooters out there, nobody else offers 40 kPa firepower with such an incredibly effective gear game and all around versatility.

Coolest if you made me pick someone other than 2767: 125. Love that feeder. (Honorable mention to 971 and 1323 for their takes on it as well)

Most elegant / effective (ball) robot if you made me pick someone other than 2767: 1986. Every year there is a shooting game, someone seems to come up with the “mechanically simple but devastatingly effective” machine + strategy that many others wish they had built. This year it was 1986.

Most elegant / effective (gear) robot if you made me pick someone other than 2767: 558 (honorable mention 4481) for their awesome pickup mechanism.

Robot 254 should have built: Mostly 254 from the bumpers up (but I would separate out the hanger from the shooter), with a gear mechanism like 558’s below deck.

5

I’m going to pick all robots other than 2767 for this one.

Coolest: 971 (I feel like this is becoming a tradition)

Most elegant: 1986. I saw this robot early in the season and it just made me repeatedly face palm and say “why didn’t I think of that?”

Most effective: 604 and 5499

Robot we (team 100) should have built: Either 604 or 5499

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6

Note: I have a severe Bay Area bias

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7

Coolest: 125 by far. That feeder was absolutely insane.

Most elegant: The consistent shooting of 1986 made them one of the most mesmerizing to watch.

Most effective: I think 254 was the most effective robot this year. Everything about their robot was very strong and seeing a gear with ~40kpa in auto was one of the craziest things I’ve seen.

The Robot We Should’ve Built: The 4613 off season minibot. We discussed this tiny efficient gear-bot idea on the first couple days of build season but ultimately went the complete opposite direction.

8

Coolest: 118. If you got an opportunity to see them up close, you would be mesmerized by the sheer amount of engineering and innovation in their robot. They used an elevator system on their gear intake, which I personally have not saw, and their shooters were one of the best.

Most elegant: 2056, I might be in the minority on this but I would pick OP here. I loved their robot because it was very simple. They could fill their hopper by just driving into a group of balls in two seconds. Their gear collector was also really good.

Most effective: I think 2767 was the most effective robot this year. Their swerve drive was very well implemented and they had one of the best shooters. They were also really good at placing gears. This combination of fast placing and frequent shooting made them very effective.

My personal favorite robot: 2451, We missed the opportunity to play with them at worlds but we did pick them at IRI. Seeing their robot in the pits was very mesmerizing at first. I loved their shooter - we ran double hopper with them many times. Their gear placer was also very unique and was a thing of beauty.

9

Ooh, this is a tough one. So many great teams this year.

Coolest:

There were lots of cool robots this year, so I’ll break it down by highlighting the coolest teams in each part of the game.

For shooting, it’s hard to argue with 125 or 971. Both teams had very fast and very accurate shooters that commanded the crowd’s attention.

For gears, 4481 takes the cake. Their gear mechanism this year is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen on an FRC robot.

For climbing, I’d go with 180. Still not sure how they got their robot to climb so fast, but it was fun to watch!

Most Effective:

Tough choice here, but I’d go with 987 or 2122. Both teams built sturdy robots that got the fuel and gear jobs done and got the team to Einstein. 118, 1678, 604, and 3310 would also fit into this category.

Most Elegant:

I think the most elegant robot I saw this year was 2451. There was something about their shooter and autonomous that made me love watching them.

Rookie:

  1. Naatsis’áán had one of the coolest stories of any rookie team this year, and I hope to see these guys have another great year next year.
10

Coolest: 971, hands down the paintball feeder idea is absolutely amazing.

Most Elegant: 2767, they were just so smooth it was beautiful to watch.

Most Effective: For me this one is a toss-up between 254 and 1678, very similar robots with very similar abilities and both were able to put up extremely high scores by themselves.

Robot we should have built: 5842, Royal Robotics, we saw them at Huntsville and I was very impressed, I did not see much of their shooting game until Saturday, but they showed that they could keep up with the big name shooters like 179. Their gear game did not suffer though as was the unfortunate case with many shooting robots.

11

Coolest: 125
Most elegant: 192
Most effective: 254
Personal favorite that I saw IRL: 5924
What we should have built: 125 with a gear mech from 5499 or 8613.

12

Coolest: 1323 - The original idea was super cool: swerve, dye rotor, and two intakes. Although they ended up having to take off one of the intakes, it was a beast of a robot and a technical masterpiece.
Most Elegant: 2451 - Their entire system was well integrated and I don’t recall seeing any gear mech like theirs.
Most Effective: I don’t see how it can’t be 254 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BpOX_5ayuM
Favourite Rookie Robot: 6554 - They were our alliance captains at the Orange County Regional and absolutely killed it. They managed to get 5/6 gears at champs and ended up being the 4rth robot on the first alliance on Turing.

13

Cool thread idea!

Coolest: 125. Really excellent engineering for that shooter feeder.
Most Elegant: 195. A well rounded robot from the start that was extremely well built, and their IRI win is well deserved.
Most Effective: 5687. Superbly efficient gear cycling - every part of the process was fast, tough to defend, and well-built.
Favorite Rookie: 6328. The robot was awesome - their machining, neat pit, and strategic use of kit parts (see: Andymark frame + VEXpro/WCP products on the drivebase) was only complemented by the fact that their team is amazingly GP and lots of fun to work with.

14

Coolest: 971/125 feeders were pretty mesmerizing to watch.
Most Elegant: 2767’s swerve is how we all imagine swerve to be. This was a great year to show off swerve’s capabilities too.
Most Effective All-Around: 254’s gear+hopper auton solidly thrashed any alliance. It gave their alliance an edge that was easy to maintain for most of their matches. I also liked 118’s ability to shoot from the gear peg.
Most Effective Gear-Running: I liked 610’s passive auto-alignment to the peg, coupled with their ability to passive chute-feed as well as retrieve from the ground if necessary. This all combined to make them crazy-fast at cycles no matter what the traffic situation was like.
Favorite Rookie: 6334 rebuilt their passive feeder for district champs, and it made their gear cycles almost as fast as 558’s & 610’s if the pilots could keep up (passive placement).
The bot that 1885 should have built: 4481’s gear intake, 610’s placement, 1885’s climber but at the height of 180’s climber. It was still appropriate for us to ignore fuel, all things considered.

15

This one is tough. I had the fortune of seeing a lot of great robots this year, but I’ll talk about a few here.

Early on at Northern Lights, the ground gear pick-ups that 525, 3130, and 2175 had made me think, “Why in the world did my team not think of that?” Then I saw 5687 and 4481 on old match videos and I thought, “Yep. My team needs this.” Others on my team agreed, and we redesigned accordingly.

Then, I bought into the rumor that fuel didn’t matter. 1574 was the robot that disproved that. My team had toyed with the idea of having a 40kPa auto, but we ended up ignoring fuel. Seeing 1574 pull off that feat amazed me. There were plenty of other robots capable of 40kPa in auto (1678, 1986, 2481, 254, 971, 195, 2451, 2122, 125, I’m sure I’m missing some), but 1574 was the first to remind me that fuel did, in fact, matter.

I haven’t seen talk about favorite alliances, but I’d like to know what some of them were, seeing as Steamworks was such an alliance-based game. At the regional level, my favorite alliance was an alliance that never should have happened. That was the #1 alliance at Minnesota North Star (3130, 1710, and 3277). Two excellent gear bots in 3130 and 1710 picked a 40kPa-capable shooter in 3277. They blazed through eliminations undefeated, due to all of them playing to their strengths throughout the QF and SF matches, and 3130 playing some hardcore defense on my team’s robot when they had issues with their robot.

My favorite alliances at Championship was the #3 alliance on Carson (125, 5687, 1796, and 597). 5687 and 1796 were two gear powerhouses that could get four rotors by themselves and let 125 do their magic with fuel. They went undefeated in the eliminations in the toughest division in St. Louis, and would have made it to finals were it not for amazing defensive play by 1241.

16

I’ll play!

Coolest robot this year?
125. Just look at this thing!

The runner up is 2451, for their 8x 775 pro gearbox. They ran the numbers, ignored the conventional wisdom, and invented a drive that many teams will be copying next year. Also they were super friendly to talk about it with at IRI!

What was your Most Elegant?
I’m a big fan of 340, 1285 and their ilk. These teams analyzed the game and realized that the balls were (mostly) a distraction. They built small, fast gear-bots, with great ground pick-ups, and a clear view to the peg. This let them average 6 gears a match, plus auto - enough to cover more than half of four rotors.

I’ll also give a shout-out to 610, who’s slidey auto-centering gear holder let them drop off gears in seconds or less.

What was your Most Effective?
As much as I loved building our first rotating turret this year, I’ve come to respect the 2056, 254, 1678 body plan. Using a fixed shooter let them open up the hopper for more balls and feeder mechanisms. Sashaying up to the hopper using the side of the robot is so obvious in retrospect. I’m still shocked that these teams could aim so accurately using the drivetrain though. That’s some respectable programming.

On that note, I’m going to give my overall favourite robot title to2767. They took a fixed turret and compensated by adding a very-well executed Swerve Drive, in the first game I’ve seen where Swerve had a measurable advantage. (1986is close, but swerve > meccanums)

And what was your favorite Rookie Robot?
6387. They hit the Ontario District like they’ve been playing for years (and they kinda have).

17

5687 is one of my favorite gear bots, but I just realized they didn’t have a ground pick-up. That was just 4481. Ah, silly me.

Categorically, this is how I would arrange it:

Coolest: 125 and 2451
Most elegant/effective: 254 and 2767
Best rookie: 6546
What we should have built: 33’s drivetrain, 4481’s gear mechanism, and 180’s climber

18

5687 had both a ground and a human load pickup, as far as I know. I believe the ground pickup was added for their 2nd event but I’m not sure.

19

What was your Coolest robot this year?
Gears: 188. Blizzard’s gear intake was the cleanest I’d seen. Their under-frame roller mechanism to get the gear into place had to make for some of the fastest and simplest gear acquisitions in the whole season. No stopping, no slowing down, just drive and own it.
Shooter+Gears: 125 hands down. They started #teamdye, they mastered #teamdye, and being the last dye rotor design to play, they ended #teamdye. Although the end result was far from the typical paintball dye rotor design, 125 developed the most optimized and effective dye rotor robot out there, and in my book, the best shooter.

What was your Most Elegant?
Gears: 1296. I’m slightly biased, but Full Metal Jackets chose a simple, clean design and made the most out of it. I was on the 1296 hype train before champs started, and I’m still riding along after the season. Their driving was smooth, their process for intaking and subsequently scoring a gear was well-practiced, and they had their operations down to a science.
Shooter+Gears: I don’t wanna sound like a broken record, but again it’s 125. Sure it wasn’t perfect, but at the end of the day that machine put more fuel in the goal than almost everyone else. If there were a robot to ever reach 30 bps, it’d be 125 (though after actually counting it’ll be closer to 20 bps).

What was your Most Effective?
Gears: 604. Quixilver came out of nowhere this year with a quick, tiny robot and a mastery of gear cycling. At early practice sessions at 254’s lab, 604 was already cycling gears at a rate faster than many teams at champs. The Leland High team analyzed the game, discovered how they could best succeed in it, and owned it. It was no mistake that they made it to Einstein this year.
Shooter+Gears: 254. No explanation necessary - they were the GOAT. It was between 254 and 125, but 254 handled gears a bit better, and 125 already made my list as coolest and most elegant, so naturally I had to give this position to The Cheesy Poofs.

And what was your favorite Rookie Robot?
Gears: Technically not a rookie team, but after losing most of their resources and half their build season I’m gonna count 5499 as a rookie this year. What they struggled to toss together in half a season out-performed robots that had twice the build time and half the roadblocks.
Shooter+Gears: In all honesty, I don’t have a favorite Shooter+Gears rookie robot. Most all the ones that come to mind should have just done gears, and if there are ones I’m forgetting then they probably didn’t stand out as shooters either.

20

I meant that they didn’t have a ground pick-up during Week 1. I mostly saw their human load during Champs, however.