So how does everybody name their robot?
Just randomly comes to someone and everyone is just like “sure, whatever” or do take a ballot or something?
We are more on the “it just randomly comes to someone” side.
Our students this year dropped a LOT of parts in the bot which we have now dubbed Plinko.
Whoever is in charge of building a mechanism names it on our team. We spontaneously some up with the chassis name, and our total put together bot is named by our mentor
The last 2 years I threw out a google forms link and let people suggest names. Team leadership dwindles it down to a smaller <10 list and then we present that list to the team. People who suggested a name that made the list tell why they suggested it and then we vote.
Other years we’ve done the same thing, other years it just comes to someone and everybody agrees to it.
Either way its generally a consensus type decision.
It’s a team discussion and vote. We always name our robots after inspiring women in STEM, with a focus on celebrating lesser knowing individuals and on connecting them with the year’s theme, although that is not a requirement.
So for this year, Sally Ride would be an inspiring female in STEM connected to the theme, but is someone very well known. The same could be said for the women highlighted in the movie Hidden Figures a few years ago.
Our finalists this year were:
The team ultimately went with Aisha Bowe, largely because she went against the advice given to her as a student in order to study aeronautical engineering, a male dominated field. Her guidance counselor had advised her to study cosmetology.
Since 2009 Triple Helix robots have been Genome ________. We’re working our way through the Greek Alphabet. This year is Genome Lambda.
All our robots end with “arry”, This years is Clefairy. We have had Larry, Dairy, Perry, Barry, and Jerry as well.
We name our robotics strictly baised off of birds, and alternating female and male. The past 3 years have gone Falca, Griffin, and now Raven.
Our bot this year is “Opportunity 2” after the lost mars rover.
It became the thing that everytime we build something that doesn’t go on the robot or isn’t part of it we just come up with a song name for it Like Sweet Caroline for our first Climbing Mechanism from Power Up or Mr. Roboto for the Climbing mechanism for this year
Our team (Bert 4750) just always calls the new robot Bert X, where X is the number of years we’ve been a team. This is our seventh year, so this year our robot is Bert 7. Not super creative, but it works. Our individual mechanisms do have names tho. Like this year our hatch mechanism is called the Shield and the cargo intake is called the Sleigh
We usually just do a general online poll where students can put up names and then after about a week the team votes on the name they like the most.
The one rule we have is that the name of the robot needs to include the name of a mentor on the team. It’s a nice way of showing thanks IMO.
We hold a vote. This year we did it online on our Team App and left it up for a week. Only 19 team members bothered to vote and X-celsior! won out.
In 2017 we machine turned the hopper of our robot and had a lot of genuine brass and copper accents. Due to the similarity to the plane, “spirit of St. Louis” the name “spirit of East Grand Rapids” was suggested. 2017 was also the last year St. Louis would host the Championship and the previous year our rookie team was quite successful (ranking 13th in Michigan) so our cocky selves took the name back to “Spirit of St. Louis” because we just “knew” we would qualify for worlds again.
We did end up qualifying for worlds and won a blue banner that year, but we were far from 13th in Michigan.
Still one of the most beautiful bots I’ve ever seen.
Each year we name our robot after a figure from Greek mythology. Some years it’s obvious which deity to pick (2018 and 2014), other years not so. After picking one, we make a backronym for it.
We do a team vote, which has ended up in meme names winning the past few years as people just recommend them, and we usually go with what we find funny.
We introduce you to Robamba this year
Our process has been pretty organic. We choose a different theme each year, well in advance of build season, and our robot ends up with a name that fits the theme. Sometimes it comes from the robot’s characteristics; this year’s it’s the Xenomorph because of specific parts of the robot that look and act like the Alien creature. Last year it was the DeLorean (our theme was 1985), the year before was Riptide (surfing theme), Horton in 2016 (Dr. Seuss theme), and before that we had the Bus (VW 1969). In 2014 the robot was not named until it was torn in half at the end of our first regional, then completely rebuilt for our second; it earned “Phoenix”.
We set up our pit at competitions on Friday nights, and a volunteer usually comes up and asks for the robot’s name, so we think of it then on the spot.
Usually, the robot name has something to do with “sending it”. 
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