Flying your robot to a competition as luggage for cheap shipping

[cdfps]

I just read March 15th 2022 team blast and it mentioned shipping with plenty of lead time from overseas destinations because it could take weeks.

A few years back when FedEx stopped providing free shipping to out of state events (Big thanks for FedEx doing that all those years! BTW) we were looking for an economical alternative to get our robot from Massachusetts to Florida. A team (forget the number) had told me that they flew their robot somewhere, sooo… Spoiler alert as you might guess from the thread title the answer was flying the robot as oversize luggage. So I’ll tell you a little about our experiences about having done this several times now.

I’m going to make this as a list in the hopes of making the information more digestible.

1. The robot must be designed to break down into luggage sized (or oversized luggage) modules.

2. Check luggage can be a crate 60 inches or less and up to 50lbs. Price Free with ticket or checked luggage sur charge depending on flight. (Jet blue offered two free check-ins this year for FL)

3. Oversize luggage can be a crate 80 inches or less and between 51 and 100 lbs $150USD ish each way domestic flights.

4. We make the crates out of 3/16 hardboard with pine screwing blocks at each corner and duck taped seams usually with fibreglass filiment tape around the box twice in each direction.

5. TSA has always opened the crates and always resealed it securely.

6. We allot an extra hour when arriving at the airport too.

7. You cannot ship batteries or fire extinguishers so those must be borrowed from generous teams at the events (Thanks team MARS and 59 south Florida 2022!) There is a list from TSA what can be shipped and would be well worth checking.

8. Borrowing batteries is not real trick because teams already do it for the international teams.

9. We have never had a robot broken in shipment.

10. We ship tools and support materials in regular 50lb checked luggage (as a crate)

11. The crates have been on the order of 12lbs and made from hardboard custom for each robot so they are always worse for wear after a trip and are never reused. Even the hardboard is so worn after a trip it is unusable for anything but a trophy on the shop wall if it is particularly damaged

12. The oversize luggage has always come out on the luggage carousel so be ready with strong backs ready to receive it.

13. You need a robot cart shipped as regular luggage so that you have something to move the robot on when arrives. 80lbs is too heavy to carry safely any distance especially with a janky hardboard crate.

14. We have loaded the crates into school busses, 12 passenger vans, 24 passenger party busses, etc, It has never not worked though some times it is a little of a trick to get it loaded.

15. We ship bumpers in a plastic bag (left over from the US FIRST bag-n-tag years), with gaffers tape keeping the plastic tight.

16. We use a furniture cart for the robot cart at these events and also to move the crate (s) it is just checked as luggage no wrapping (it is a furniture cart so it would be hard to damage it)

17. We have never had any trouble at check in they just slap some stickers on the oversize crate and we see it again on the other side.

18. TSA told me when I asked about doing this the first time (2015?) that there is the chance that they would have you open the crate with them but this has not happened yet.

19. The oversize charge is $150 to ship each way domestically so a total of $300 round trip as we plan around using only one oversize crate.

20. The robot has to be assembled from the parts in the check luggage and the main robot part in the crate at the event before inspection, so it is good to design in ease of assembly of modular components and it is advisable to have the team disassemble and reassemble the robot before it is sent down to ensure that that goes smoothly.

20 Making a written assembly procedure when doing the practice disassembly / reassembly at the shop makes the reassembly at the venue smoother.

I’m sure I missed something as we are getting ready for a competition this weekend in Reading MA, but FYI, shipping your robot as oversize luggage on a flight is certainly an option.

[Tijinn]

We shipped our robot in modules this year for the first time and I think its safe to say we’re big fans!

[Big_frc_fan]

I’ve seen the interviews and online content that 4481 produces, excellent work by the team - fast prototyping, insightful game analysis etc. I’m in awe of how good your robot is, especially considering that it undergoes final assembly in North America after coming over in suitcases. Congratulations on your success in Florida!

[Squillo]

We’ve been doing this for several years also, flying our robot to Oahu (from Kauai) and also to competitions on the mainland. We usually fly Hawaiian, sometimes Alaska Air or Southwest. Our experiences and the applicable rules have been a bit different, so be sure to check with your airlines.

Hawaiian and SW allow us two free check bags per person (Hawaiian because we have a corporate account with them). Just by way of example, Hawaiian allows an ‘overweight’ bag up to 100 lbs. and ‘oversize’ up to 80 linear inches (height + width + length). We have two large crates (this year, and also in 2020 when we took our robot to LA North before the pandemic), made out of thin plywood with aluminum edging and corners (think flight case, I’ll post a pic later when I’m in the shop). They each have two handles. I got the flight-case hardware from Penn-Elcom (my husband is a luthier and had just built a couple of cases to ship a custom instrument cross-country, so I pretty much copied his design). The aluminum edges are riveted to the wood using washers and long rivets.

We put the chassis into the biggest crate, the turret shooter into the smaller one (this year the intake will go in there also), and in 2020 we put our ‘hanger’ into a large duffel bag fortified with foam-backed wood pieces. This year our hanger is longer, but I found a bag at Sweetwater (intended for drum hardware) that is 50" x 13" x 13", it’s a really nice long duffel that will work nicely with the pieces wrapped in bubble-wrap. There are charges for the oversize and overweight bags (the cost for 81-100 lbs and 62-80" is $100 or so per bag, but every airline is different on this).

TSA does usually open one or more of the crates (I think they are just curious) but they get everything back together (it’s easy with the latches we use). We don’t need a robot crate when it’s together because we just roll it on its wheels. The handles allow the crates to be hauled by two team members.

We do have to rebuild the robot at our destination, and break it down at the end of the competition. We try to build modularly, using connectors and so on, but there’s still a bit of work to get everything back in working order. The rules say you can’t work on the robot outside of the pits after load-in begins, so we need to allow enough time BEFORE load-in to rebuild the robot in our hotel room, or sometimes a local team will let us use their shop the day or night before the competition. That’s a great way to get to know another team. We tend to have a pretty minimalist pit; the ‘Fluke’ tool bags that were available on FIRST Choice last year are great for packing tools. We have found that non-spillable gel batteries, packed into a properly-labeled cooler (doubles as a cooler for drinks during the competition), ARE accepted by the airlines as checked baggage.

Overall, especially with shipping being what it is, we like this option. It saves $$ and also allows us to keep working on our robot until just a day or two before we fly, unlike shipping in a crate which takes at least a week.

[troy_dietz]

Gonna note this here:

Houston travel - Tips & Tricks from the "Team Travel Mentor"

Fun fact: you can also make an illegally oversized custom box, write the wrong dimensions on it, and they won’t bother measuring it at the bag check counter. I think I or our driver also took the spare 2016 shooter head as a carryon and they were chill with that? [image] Southwest is 100% the cool uncle of airlines.

You don’t even need to make boxes if stuff is reasonably self-contained.

[PatrickW]

We brought our robot as oversized luggage to Chezy Champs this past fall. Worked out great. It was a pretty small robot. Most robots would probably need to be disassembled a bit to meet the linear inches requirement.

[Nate_Laverdure]

We’d be remiss if we do not recognize 5553, who successfully pulled off suitcase-based transport and reassembly within the withholding rules in 2018. Mad lads.

Examples of Robot Rebuilds

To answer your question: When we came back in France after Montreal regional (our first and last one) we worked on our second bot (that was almost identical to our comp bot). Then we designed and built a unique version of our pivot that we mounted on the second bot. Then, when we left for Detroit, we disassembled the pivot into several parts to carry them with us on the plane. And I didn’t specify but of course the pivot was designed to respect the withholding allowance limit. So when we arriv…

[spacepenguine]

3538 RoboJackets (MI) has broken down their robot to fly out ChezyChamps (CA) a few times.

[cdfps]

Props to Team Rembrandts as well for an excellent performance in South Florida.

[waialua359]

As a Hawaii based team, I could never plan to do this. It’s stressing enough to field a robot. But to now package it to go in suitcases? I only have 6/1/2 weeks of build season before our first event.

I’d much rather spend my time raising funds to ship it to and from events. Easier and I have the whole school year to work on it.

[philso]

If you are flying to the same events every year, you can find someone in each location to stockpile batteries and a cart. I was doing that for a team from overseas for several years. I was also receiving spare parts for them. There were some other teams in the Houston area doing the same thing for other teams.

[captainredbeard]

Our team (from Big Island, HI) has been checking our robot as luggage to the mainland for many years now when we compete on the Continent. It’s definitely a design constraint to work within (one of the reasons our robot is comparatively small this year), but I think it’s a great added challenge for the kids. A couple of notes for US-based teams thinking about this method:

1. Alaska has a very generous oversized bag policy. You can go 115 linear inches and 100 lbs for $100
2. We usually make a cardboard box for our shipping. This year has been our best success in that regard
3. Bumpers make great packing/padding/structure material for the shipping box (highly recommend not shipping them separate)
4. You can check robot batteries! (Just wrap them in cardboard or pack in a milk crate). With current weight you can ship 2-3 batteries per checked bag depending on your bag
5. Lithium ion batteries for power tools (i.e. drills) need to be carried on, but you can just give them to one kid to take care of
6. Costco sells a great Cosco cart and (somewhat cheaply) has a great return policy
7. Airline credit cards are a great deal with the 2 free checked bag policy if a mentor can apply for one

Full disclosure, it really was a hassle to check a robot in the bag era. But our two post bag-era competition experiences have really made checking the robot a lot more straight forward as we can wrench and assemble in a hotel room the night before.

[cdfps]

As I remember, this year we flew jet blue and they had a limit on watt hours on gel cells as well as lithium cells and the first batteries was over that.

I would really like to be wrong about not being able to fly with our batteries.

[captainredbeard]

Hmm, don’t know if it’s airline specific, but we’ve definitely been checking our batteries through with no problem on Hawaiian, Delta, and Alaska.