Our storage space in our shop is overflowing with robots but we do not want to disassemble them because we use them for testing. What do other teams do to store lots of robots in not a lot of space. Giant shelfs came to mind but i am wondering if there are any other options
Even if you do want to keep every robot for testing, consider exactly what parts you need. Even shortening some down to their chassis will save you a lot of room if you store vertically. We try to be discerning about exactly what type of testbeds we want running given the number of cRios. You can stick them on something like this, even 4-6 high if you takes lots of the tops off (this is quite an old picture).
Shortening the old robots leaves nice testbeds while also minimizing storage space, freeing up reusable COTS parts, and providing fun, unintense and educational summer work for rookies.
We use giant shelving with the robots above our work and storage cabinets. We have every one of our robots except our 1996 rookie (plywood, destroyed) robot and the one that is in the museum in Manchester.
We have our last 11 robots…
Just a note, if you’re going to do this I would reccomend mentors moving the robots into place. The robots were significantly more difficult to get up the first time than expected. We had three people on the ground and some on the shelving unit itself. Stay Safe!
We have every robot we’ve ever made, and it’s becoming a real problem. We got a new shop space, a garage space, and two cargo containers, and we’re still tripping over robots. I think we’re at about 15 or so FRC-sized robots. I just don’t have the heart to scrap any of them.
Sometimes it’s just hard to get rid of robots after all the work you put into them!
We have enormous shelves in our metal shop on top of which is our robot graveyard. We have 1998 and 2000-2007 (2008 was in our wood shop, 2009 is in our part storage room (has easy access because we were world finalists that year), 2010 was in our old programming room in the corner (we don’t like to talk about 2010…), 2011 was in the wood shop, 2012 was either in the same room as the 2009 robot or in the metal shop under repair (as it is our demo bot and frequently breaks nowadays). And our current (2013) robot is usually on our robot cart in our metal shop.
We’ve had trouble keeping our robots in good shape. Everything before 09 is trashed, and this years robot is starting to rust! (The climber is steel 
) My recommendation is to take pictures, save the frame/wheelbase, and strip everything off.
I can’t remember what team (Gut says Bomb Squad), but some team hangs their old robots from the ceiling. Seems to free up space on the ground.
+1.
We take the manipulators off and save the chassis. We took the arm off of our 2011 robot and now have a mechanum chassis. We used our 2006 practice chassis as our practice chassis this year. Keeping chassis is good if you plan on using different drive systems in the future.
Also: CalTran, I think it is 16. They showed off their old robots in their 2012 robot unveil video.
16 is Bomb Squad
It is. I’ve offered to take their 08 bot off of Meredith’s hands a couple times.
I know.
I was saying that in a tone like “It is 16”. It’s hard to catch the tone of someone through writing 
We keep our old robots on top of some storage shelves at IFI. We have every robot since 1993 lined up, in chronological order. A few of the oldest ones aren’t very recognizable anymore, but everything from 1999 on is mostly intact. The world champions (1993, 2008) get a special display location in the VEX lab. It’s pretty cool to see a visual history of our team’s past.
On a related note - when I was on 126, they had all the old robots hanging from the ceiling like 16 does. Pretty neat idea if you want to save floor space… just make sure you have solid cables and attachment points!
Shouldn’t be too hard for this year’s robot, then.
Bottom of the pool would be a good option. This space is always underutilized and every swim could be like a wreck drive.
Seriously, though, we are in 9th year as an FRC team; we’ve built two complete robots for the last three years; and I do not think we have ever had more than 4 assembled robots at any given time. Space limitations are one important reason for this, but so is part recycling. Especially when building two robots, we realize some real savings by recycling old parts.
The robots we keep are kept because we believe that they will be useful. As testbeds. OP-FORCE training robots, or demos. We currently keep 4 working robots (some just as chassis) for these purposes.
We do document our robots thoroughly, so as not to lose institutional knowledge when we disassemble an old robot.