Posted by Anton Abaya at 2/20/2001 12:53 AM EST
Coach on team #419, Rambots, from UMass Boston / BC High and NONE AT THE MOMENT! :(.
Well here she is. We tried, tried harder, and tried some more when there was no trying left.
Our original design was to go under the bar, be lightning fast, control the bridge by lifting it for those who wanted access to it, and pulling one goal.
Bah, the heck with that! After the Quincy Scrimmage, we realized that they were all useless and even though we could get them to work each time, they were stupid attempts at making a robot that could be a jack of all trades, master of none. So why bother when other robots could do it faster and better, and they have machine shops to build robots in.
It’s been 72 hours since our major redesign. Our failed attempt at lifting the bridge made us realized that our hooks in the back were also useless to alliances that already had that function.
Thanks to the quincy scrimmage, we were able to find out that our SPEED (we were the fastest) was essential and our greatest strength. So why not use it? In one of the rounds where the score reached 220 (i think or higher) we were used to kick the big ball around to the robot that can pick up balls. They took the ball from the opposite side and we ran straight to the end zone. On the other hand, we’re still have some hooks just in case we want to pull (or even push) a goal. Towing a goal is really easy and fast with our robot, we noticed.
Well, read on…check the link for the site with all the pics… I warn you that it might be a slow load as I loaded everything into one page. Click on the links to blow up the pics.
If there’s one thing I am happy I made sure of, it’s the fact that we kept the design as open to change as possible. Who knows what would happen!
So hey, we tried hard and we got to this point with no engineers, 3 students who actually worked full time on the robot, and a scarce budget and mere power tools. Whether the bot is deserving an applause is up to the audience, I only hope to see you all soon.
Feel free to email me for questions, comments, suggestion, raves, rants, and i love yous.
As always, I can never thank enough all of you guys who answered all my questions this year. I was lost without this place, you guys cleared the path.
-Anton Abaya
Rambots, #419
ps. I hope that because this message is right above the Chief Delphi Robot, we might look better…hehe…
