Count me among the people who’d love to see:
A) Team AndyMark’s robot finished, regardless of how much extra time they need.
B) All 6 72-hour robots (Ri3D 1.0, AndyMark, Boom.Done., O-RYON, TeamJVN, and TeamCopioli) in one place, with a field, playing a MATCH (or possibly a small tournament) of Aerial Assist, before the end of build season.
Great idea, or somthing like that, maybe some mock matches with mock officials that know the rules, robots and teams to play out real scenarios.
It would be great to watch some actual matches play out, this would help teams figure out what will actually happen at competitons without learning the hard way.
How many times have we said “hey I didn’t forsee that happening” or “you can do that?” :ahh:
Will this actually be a FRC’s teams competition robot?
Even though it’s completely impossible. I think It would be really cool to see these robots compete in an actual regional. It would be interesting to see how they size up against what everyone else builds this year.
No. I love it way too much to risk letting some high school kid drive it like he stole it 
Joe J
haha.
Have you tried other materials for the intake system? A very popular sticky item back in 2010 was Dycem, I even pushed to use it on our floor intake last year.
Thanks Dan.
Would it be possible to provide a version of the Ri3D1.0 video with subtitles? Or maybe just a version with the background music completely muted when people are speaking? Their voices are muffled and I cannot understand what they are saying. Thank you.
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Those are some pretty impressive robots. Is it true that nearly every team will be releasing their schematics and code for their robots? And if so anybody find any crucial flaws that would be difficult to overcome during a regional. I would love to talk through some of these designs with my team.
Dr Joe,
BTW, the motor/chain powered launch mechanism is leading me away from a winch/catapult style design for my team.
Regards,
Marc Center, FRC3548 coach
Dr Joe,
Out of curiosity, how did you fasten the “toro sticks” to the Versa planetary output shafts? What material are they?
Toro Horns. Schedule 80 PVC (thicker wall than Schedule 40). I heated up some 1/2" hex shaft and melted it in place so that a Versaplanetary shaft fits tight inside.
Very happy with the result.
Dr. Joe
The VersaPlanetary set up is this:
I love the versaplanetary system. I think they are a huge help to teams prototyping because it is so easy to change the motor or the ratio or the output shaft. I’ve got no financial stake in the product or company, I recommend buying a boatload of ratios and output styles (1/2" hex and 1/2" round are my preference).
Calling 'em like I see 'em.
Dr. Joe
Dr Joe,
Thanks for your answer.
Sticky material (dycem?) from a previous post (Alex Cormier) found can be found at andymark here http://www.andymark.com/product-p/am-2454.htm
This may be a suitable substitute for the natural latex rubber product you used from McMaster-Carr, but needs testing for confirmation.
Regards,
Marc Center
I agree with Andy Grady on the judging show: El Torro will be the single most copied mechanism this year. To all the teams participating, good job, and thank you all for your time and effort.
Dr. Joe, if it’s as planned, we may have a robot named after you (we have a tradition of naming robots after people) 
Thanks for the feedback Either! We were dissappointed with the audio quality during that take, but did not notice it until editing. We will do our best to get some annotations in. In the mean time we will do a complete rundown of the robot. May be long and boring but we hope it to be informative. We have quite a few important features that need to be highlighted.
Thanks,
Dan
Thank you!
This does not sound the least bit boring to me! What you’ve described above will be an excellent teaching tool. It sounds somewhat like Joe Johnson’s video, which was the most informative and helpful of the 4 posted.
Our team is working on a prototype of the catapult system used, our question is what are they using to pull back the arm on team JVN? What is the black material shown in the picture attached? 
It is surgical tubing.
That was to say, very little editing, snappy music etc… Joe’s video may have been simple but it was very well produced AND any time Joe speaks, something interesting is said! I hope to have something by Saturday.
I’ve also uploaded rev1 of our winch gearbox to the Robotin3Days.com blog. There is some missing info and minor differences between this version and ours. Most namely on our bot we trimmed down the dog and gears and in this version I left them untrimmed. The intent is to get closer to an off the shelf solution for teams. The only custom part is the shaft which AndyMark has agreed to carry and should be available sometime next week.
This is true. We stayed with our original intent of the challenge: To demonstrate a mostly FIRST legal robot, utilizing efficient prototyping process, tools and techniques. We also were committed to having our systems completed and not left in unfinished state. If it weren’t going to be able to implement it in time, it didn’t go on the robot.
We believe strongly that if teams focus on finishing early and allowing their drive teams and programmers time with the bot they will see significant competitive advantage at their first regional. Most teams only see 1 regional, so this is a huge must for them. Teams that show up Thursday morning ready to pass inspection and practice immediately will have competitive advantage early on, unless they have the resources i.e. 2 robots or multiple Regionals to compensate for this lost time. Our team saw the equivalent of 2 weeks worth of driver practice and test and adjust utilizing these principles.
(This obviously doesn’t count for rule binding things like bumpers etc… Make sure you read the rules…)
