Our 2014 robot, Becca, finally retired after the 2015 Madtown Throwback with 151 matches. 971’s robot Mammoth and 254’s Barrage probably had about 20 less matches because they either were in fewer regionals or off season events.
Robots in district regions such as Michigan and MAR that go to IRI may get in 120 matches. Off season events might add more. Are there are robots that have gotten up to 150 or more?
125 in 2014 is up there, but I don’t have an exact number.
Our (125) 2014 bot was probably close. I think counting the crap ton of replays we had to do we had hit 100 by DCMP, I stopped counting there. I know by IRI I was curious if the bot was just going to fall apart. And I skipped out on most of our off seasons because I was sick of events. TBA has us at 135 but is missing at least the Week 0 event (I think there were 10 matches here), 4 replays from Groton, 3 from RI, 1 from NEU, and River Rage.
1640’s 2015 robot has 91 matches listed on TBA, but TBA is missing it competing in Ramp Riot, Duel on the Delaware, and MidKnight Mayhem. They might have competed elsewhere, as well. Definitely north of 120 matches.
I decided to count it up for 1058 this year, and we are at 120 matches despite only making it to finals twice all year. We could’ve gone to two more offseasons but decided not to for outreach events instead.
125’s 2014 robot is a very good candidate.
I’m estimating 1519’s 2015 robot, King Tote-em-Can-um had about 145 matches at events this year, between Week 0, 3 Districts, DCMP and CMP, and then 4 off-season events. I’m guessing this was probably our team’s “record.” We used to go to more off-season events, but have never been to 5 competition season events plus Week 0 before.
1477 had 122 in 2013 with 4 regionals, advancing up to einstein, then 3 offseason events.
Wow. That’s substantial.
Have you ever considered building more than one robot, perhaps in a way that they could fit in each other and still come within the size/weight limitations, to alleviate wear and maximize match strategy?
2014 had to be 910’s season with the most matches.
Three districts, one regional, MSC, the World Championship, MARC, and IRI are listed on The Blue Alliance and put us at 122 matches.
I can’t remember if we did any other off season events that season. I think we may have gone to at least one more.
TBA has 195 down for 109 matches in 2014.
However, this doesn’t include matches from Suffield Shakedown, Where is Wolcott, Bash at the Beach (and i may be forgetting another…). The addition of these (and any replays) would probably put that robot close to 150 as well.
Pretty sure this was a great year for robot longevity, given the lack of robot on robot action. Now 150 matches in a year like 2014, 2013 etc…that really would be quite a feat:D
I feel like if you’re considering week 0 and offseason events, then practice matches should be considered too. For some teams, that could add around 20 extra matches a year if not more.
TBA has 341’s 2012 robot down for 100 matches between all season events (2 districts, 1 regional, 1 DCMP, CMP), but that robot also competed in 3 off season events (Brunswick Eruption, Duel on the Delaware, and Ramp Riot), as well as many demonstrations, so it has at the very least 130 matches played.
Killer Bees 33 are down for 99 matches in TBA (if I counted right) and that doesn’t include Kettering Kickoff or Bloomfield Girls this fall.
1241 2014 is probably up there, 4 regionals + champs + 2 off seasons
This is the real question for this thread, IMHO. What is the robot longevity during these 120 plus match marathons for a robot designed to play 2:10 short (often agressive/defensive) minutes at a time.
How many of these great teams took their “originally designed/fabricated structures” from stop build; to first match to test the length of the season (off-season events)…?
It’d also be really interesting to see how the performance of some robots changed as they got more and more beaten up. In my team’s experience, There’s sometimes a noticeable change by the time off-seasons come around. (I’m just glad there’s not much video of MARC 2014.) Our longest season was this year, at ~79 matches. Only midwest (excluding Michigan) team I can find that had more was 2826, with 84. (Perhaps 1730 had more, depending on what offseasons they went to) I could be off a little bit, as I don’t quite remember how many qualification matches there were at R2OC this year.
I believe I have told this one before on CD (and I have bored many in person), but I think it is a good story relative to this thread.
In 2007, for 33, we designed super light due to all the structure. Estimated the cycle count for the arm as about 10 cycles per match time 20 matches per event times 5 events (3 regionals, Worlds, and IRI) or about 1,000 cycles. For aluminum, this is designing just a bit past yield, but not too terrible much. Operation wise, this would be 2 minutes x 100 matches or about 3-4 hours of match play (180-240 minutes). We built a practice bot with similar structure. This bot self-destructed after about 10 hours of practice. It was structural fatigue of some of the main arm elements. Absolutely catastrophic.
Because of this, we made some fix-it parts during one of the fix it windows in case such a failure occurred at Worlds.
End of the day, the robot made it all the way through regular season*, IRI, Kettering Kick-off and then was on display at the YES expo doing match after match until it too self destructed.
When we tallied it up, (TBA shows 68 matches), but the robot likely saw close to those 100 matches, or about 3.5 hours of match play. Plus a few hours of practice/test/tune cycling plus about 1/2 day of playing with at YES expo (probably another 3 hours of operation/cycling). IE it also failed at about 10 hours of operation.
Once switching to districts, the match count just about doubles, and the potential for practice hours can be quite high with unbag time. Basically, you can’t play with the fatigue limits nearly as much as you “yusta-could”.
*We did fatigue one piece a couple times during season where the claw connected with the wrist. the issue with that piece was it had a lot of welding which lost the temper of the Aluminum, and it would yield when the arm would occasionally whack itself on the ground. We had a failure right before alliance selection at Detroit that year, and it had to be replaced.
The degeneration is real. At New England District Championships in 2014, 195 was performing at its peak during quals. Once elims came around (somewhere around match 80-85 of the season), anything that could’ve gone wrong on the robot, did go wrong. Some of the problems still weren’t solved by the end of Worlds. A lot of the moving parts were completely replaced for off-season, but the robot never performed the same again.
This is a very important part of scouting, especially at events like a District Championship or Worlds. A robot could have done great all season long, but halfway through a third or fourth competition, the continuous wear and tear shows. I have noticed this multiple times in the past two years, even more so with Aerial Assist.