If I recall correctly, 5817 Unirex from the same year was one of the fastest shooters as well.
2 Minicims direct driving 8” wheels with like 2” of compression. That shot was a laser and broke through the nets we built to stop it.
If 3250 isn’t the most unique robot this year IDK what is. Once it intakes a cube it pivots and literally shoots it into the second roller claw mounted on a pivot on top of the elevator. There climb is a freakin grappling hook that they shoot cuz why not?
What’s also pretty unique is it looks like the robot started out at it’s first event with a pretty conventional roller claw on a 3 stage elevator with the hook mounted to the elevator. It’s pretty impressive that they were able to commit to changing their robot design so drastically in between events. I’d be interested to hear about what motivated them to make that decision.
Thanks for the mention – it turns out that scoring on the scale is way easier when the cube is already 2ft off the ground. The mechanism was ~14lbs and could be added/removed with two bolts, two anderson connectors, one CAN cable, and a small code change. Because we could add or remove it in around five minutes, we were able to decide match-by-match what configuration we wanted (with any necessary inspections, etc.). We only used it when it was strategically viable – i.e. no other scale-bot on our alliance, and only one scale-bot on the opposing alliance. I think we only used it three times in official play, each to varying degrees of success.
Because this thread doesn’t have enough links showing off the mechanisms/robots, here’s a video of one of Spark’s more successful matches with Stretch 7 attached.
Absolutes such as ‘unique’ should not be modified with most, very, extremely, or other modifiers that indicate degree. Either something is unique (one of a kind) or it is not. (I had to get that off my chest for the 3rd or 4th thread this year asking for ‘most unique pick-a-thing’).
See 1519…
…with the lift stage being on a turret.
$@#$@#$@#$@#, they’re the mostest unique!
I’m going to do it! I’m going to talk about my own team!
We had all of our systems sit on a 22inch turret. TBH maybe wasn’t the most effective solution, but it made our season possible. Without the turret, we would have had the worst robot imaginable. So for that, I nominate 5980 as one of the unique robots I had the chance to see in 2018. Not the greatest. Not even that good, but unique.
:yikes:
Preach!
My favorite aspect of your turret was the way your team FORCED it to work at St. Joe, and then continued improvement for the rest of the season.
We thought our elevator was a bit unique, in that it was essentially two single-stage elevators mounted back to back. The motors (3 RS775s) rode on the middle stage at the bottom, and effectively pushed the manipulator stage upward while pushing the robot downward into the floor. This let us avoid kludgy cables and pulleys. We had two runs of #25 chain on either side of the middle (motorized) stage that were synced together at the bottom with a #25 chain running crosswise. Short of a chain break, there was no way for this arrangement to go cockeyed and jam. The tradeoff was the need to power the moving motors. The CG of the moving motors was traded for CG of cables and pulleys. The elevator was scary-fast when run wide-open.
I still remember the moment when I first found out about this. I was actually outside getting something from my car when one of my students sent a message. “4039 can do the scale now!!!” I ran inside to see it in action on the big screen in the pit area. Now that’s a dramatic use of your withholding - and finally answered the question I was asking myself since kickoff day of “why would anyone want to feed a cube back in through the top of the exchange?”
As soon as I saw this thread I automatically thought of 1519.
Watching them on Darwin, I didn’t think I saw what I saw, and had to ask the guy next to me.
Pretty sure I didn’t see any other articulated ‘bulldozer’ bucket lifting\placing mechanisms like 3711:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpB2-l-aoog&feature=youtu.be
Robot in upper right position in video
Check out 7176: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=48&v=63OP1KdPr9w
Probably one of the most unique intakes I’ve ever seen. I give it a 9/10 on the unique scale. I can’t imagine anything more unique.
5700 was pretty unique this year and won the creativity award at the Championship.
I think 5050 had a super cool climber, however, I didn’t get too good of a look at it. it was a scissor mechanism that latched onto the bar ‘like a bear trap’ fairly violently and climbed with the actuation of the scissors. they used 3 2’’ square tubes per level of the mechanism and as a member of a subgroup that tried and failed to make a scissor climber, I thought it was really cool. here is a link to a video of it in action.
I would say team 250 had a creative arm
the arm won us the Creativity award in Darwin-Curie Detroit
I guess I get to talk about my old team, 1721.
This year they wanted to make a buddy bar, but the only place they could fit it was at the back of the robot. The bar needed to be identical to the field (dimensions, distance from the wall, etc), so there robot climbs in such a way where the drive train is against the scale.
This video is a good example.
971 from any year since 2015. The Schuh robot whisperers are sure partial to their multi jointed subsystems.
2014 would like to have a word with you.
Their 2013 helix hopper was super dope too. I’d say that was the beginning of their truly unique systems.