FRC Team Strengths

I’m going to second that; we’re pretty good at it too.

I’ll third that actually, although we (the mechanical sub-team that is) seem to have at least gotten it partially together last season.

Well to toot our horn a bit I would say our team is known for two things.

The first is innovative use of pneumatics. We always use pneumatics (except for lunacy) and if you saw our arm lift this year you would understand what I mean by innovative. Also I have never seen another robot like our Overdrive robot which used 9 cylinders performing 7 different functions and had a totally unique lifting system.

The second is our love of helping others at regionals. Our pit boss isn’t happy unless he is fixing robots and since ours are so robust you will generally see our pit crew all over the place helping others.

We always seem to figure out exactly what to do, and implement it at the last possible second.

422 is relatively low in resources, but the team knows how to maximize its talent to put a high quality robot on the field that plays to a specific strategy (with additions in case the strategy doesn’t pan out.) From the best lift and dumper in 09 (not bitter we lost. Maybe a little) to the best defensive mecanum bot (I don’t know how either. Our driver took no prisoners) to the swinging ramp deployment for the fastest minibot that worked every time it had a chance (a miracle in itself).
We’re also good with a few miracles. Some stuff just fits… I don’t know how, but it fits when it all comes together. From the drive team to the electronics board, we seem to make it work every year, and that’s what makes us strong.

Seems like a lot of teams are strong at bragging about themselves!

330, one of my favorites. Shows that a team with minimal fabrication resources can make some brutally effective (and durable) robots.

If its one thing my team is good at, it’d have to be keeping the legacy alive. Majority of our mentors have been with the program since the beginning, and though designs, students, and the times change; they manage to make a great (if not better) robot each year.

Each new iteration of Buzz does not disappoint its predecessor.

We also manage to create our bot in a woodshop. :stuck_out_tongue:

I would have to say 1647 is really efficent at the pnuematics side of our robot as well as being a complete underdog at some times. Right now, the team is really just trying to find the niche that we belong in. Hopefully, next year that will consist of owning one of those nice blue banners.

I was just about to write “1625 is pretty good at doing something kinda crazy but awesome”

2815 seems to be good at getting the job done with whatever we can do in a given year.

Our first two years, we had engineering mentors with a knack for sheetmetal…which also meant we had time to get it all painted or anodized for a nice visual punch. Both were competitive designs; the first year, we made Bayou’s semifinals and the Palmetto finals. The second, we reached the Palmetto semifinals (and our twin would win the regional).

This year, our engineering skill set was greatly reduced due to graduations. With nowhere near the sheetmetal practice, we built with what we knew: the hardware section at Lowe’s, augmented with a few extra things from McMaster-Carr. We didn’t get the time to get the robot spiffed up at home, so we brought rolls of tape to Peachtree to wrap our tower and arm in garnet and black. (Contrary to popular belief at Peachtree, the tower was riveted underneath the tape.) Other issues limited the amount of practice we could get on the arm, but smart defense and feeding strategies (including using the claw) was enough to bring home our first two regional banners.

I’m surprised no ones mentioned 1114 for building good, robust, awesome robots that are highly competitive every year.

469 for something pneumatic and that transforms each year (well the past 2 at least). Everyone knows about 2010’s ball redirector and this year their elevator flips up at the beginning of the match.

254 for sweet custom gearboxes

330 for keep it simple stupid designs that work amazingly for each year as well as excellent drivers

217 for winning divisions at nationals (first team to win all 5)

Oh and 910 for bad luck almost all the time

Well, we at team 256 excel in great ideas, arguments over what ideas to use, and loosing the one bolt we need and not finding it for 3 days. I think that the 3 are somehow related…

The number of teams whose strengths include “being good” is really too many to be worth listing.

Team 359’s strength is bringing the best chocolates to tournaments and shell leis.

I think you guys are selling yourselves quite a bit short :wink:

Since I happened to hop on, you forgot that we’re also good at having some people who are obsessed with maintaining our web site :stuck_out_tongue:

I was more aiming at robustness and beautifully designed robots rather than just being good.

If we’re doing one for Simbotics, then I submit the following.

1114: Driver training. Scouting. Data analysis. Preparedness.

Their success only starts with their robot.

Our team consistently fast at tearing our robot apart and building a new one in it’s place. We did this during both lunacy and breakaway.

Our team also builds robots with very large tolerances. Many times after we have built something, we discover a misaligned axle or something of the like and yet it doesn’t affect the robots performance in the slightest. Our claw at champs was a good example of this.

We used to be really good at building overcomplicated robots that we never finish that liked to tip a lot and fall off the tower when attempting to hang…

Okay that was mostly really only one year. However in years past we built overcomplicated robots and made them work.

We learned this year that it doesn’t work for us. So we built a simple simple simple robot. And that’s what we’re going to do from now on.

I’d say we’re good at having too many students for the amount of jobs in the shop now. :stuck_out_tongue:

-Nick

971 and 254 builds really fast bots. They rarely are geared to be the fastest, but in real world practice, they get where they want to go faster than anyone else, every year.