I know there’s a few threads about 2007 robots. This has been mentioned in a few threads, but I thought it was worthy of it’s own.
After the 2006 and 2007 season, books were published detailing the designs and design process of 30 of the award winning robots. The books averaged around 10 pages of information (text and lots of pictures) per team. Pictures are everything from hand sketches done the day of kickoff to detailed design and CAD, to prototypes, to the finished robot.
The 2007 book is called FIRST Robots: Rack ‘N’ Roll: Behind the Design by Vince Wilczynski and Stephanie Slezycki.
To give you an idea of the quality of the teams featured, It contains the winners of all 5 technical award (Driving Tomorrow’s technology, Industrial Design, Quality, Control, and Creativity) winners from the championship (79, 234, 330, 375, 386). Between all the teams featured, there was 1 national champion (190), and 4 of the 12 teams on Einstein. The teams had a total of 13 regional wins and 8 regional finalists between them and won 47 technical awards.
Here’s the full list of teams: 25, 33, 40, 75, 79, 100, 111, 118, 148, 173, 190, 234, 330, 357, 375, 384, 386, 418, 1086, 1100, 1114, 1126, 1319, 1448, 1612, 1629, 1714, 1731, 1985, and 1987.
Looking through my copy of the 2007 book, I got a lot of good ideas for manipulators and control algorithms. I think it’s a great resource for all teams this year. If you want to learn from the best, this is great way to do it, that is directly applicable to this year.
You can look through parts of it on Amazon, but the really good parts aren’t available. Parts of the 2006 book are on google books, but I didn’t find the 2007 book on there.
Unfortunately, the book is out of print, but there are still ways to get it.
Half.com has it for 34.95 (below list price of 39.99). http://product.half.ebay.com/First-Robots-Rack-N-Roll_W0QQtgZinfoQQprZ63138549
Amazon.com had it for $26 earlier, but sold out. I saw it as high as $160, but now it’s available for $59.99 from the Amazon Marketplace. http://www.amazon.com/FIRST-Robots-Rack-Behind-Design/dp/1592534112/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294691730&sr=1-2
I checked ebay, but did not find any of the 2007 books, only 2006.
If you want to wait for shipping from the UK, the cheapest I found is http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1776726135&searchurl=an%3DWilczynski%26kn%3Dbehind%26x%3D0%26y%3D0
Demand seems high, which is a good thing.
It may also be available at your Library. The Los Angeles County Public Library system has 4 copies. If a local team to you was featured, they may have extra copies, because they were able to purchase them at a discount. Hopefully other people have ideas on how to get these books into team’s hands.