I wasn’t involve in the design because I had to get started on programming but I heard our team originally wanted a midget with a potato launcher. 
Please don’t post anything that might be offensive to others. It really doesn’t have any relevance here and just makes you look in poor taste.
I understand that you were trying to make a joke and I don’t mean to offend you, but you must also think of other people’s feelings before you post something that may offend someone else.
Just a friendly reminder…
You know, since we had just figured out the whole flying robot thing, we were quite irritated that we had a height limitation for 2006. Oh well…
hey maybe next year, I would like to see it. 
Yep. Our flying toaster idea went out the window with that one too…
and with that rule about not damanging the playing field…kinda had burnt poof balls …
Don’t worry. Ashlee is used to the short jokes by now. ;-]
On topic, I’m pleased that we’re being so faithful to our original design this year. We made some minor changes along the way, but we’re building essentially the 'bot we envisioned shortly after kickoff.
Our first original design was to build a tank. One big gun torrent, sweet massive treads and a solid aluminum plate.but our mentors thought that the design would have a few problems like GP and weight. Since then we decided to go with 4 wd, a smaller more compact ball launcher, and a not as solid chassis but strong enough for us to play defense, a mini tank. 
http://www.hqmc.usmc.mil/factfile.nsf/0/9e6cdb7ba648f1388525627b0065de66/$FILE/M1A1.JPG
what about having a robot that dices the balls and launched them into the center goal so for every foam cube one would get 3 points, but… that won’t work…
We first thought about a double barrel, but that just wouldn’t cut it for us…
i gotta say our looked like a shoping cart with a gun on the front
Microsoft probably wouldn’t like it too much either. You know how touchy they are about their screen savers… :rolleyes:
I believe that our original idea was a chassis with a tank-type turret, 360 degree camera for target tracking, 3-5 smaller ones to track other robots and the individual balls, anti-grav levitation plates, all powered by a cold fusion + hamster&wheel drive.
Needless to say, there have been a few modifications since then.
My fingers have suffered from trying to count the revisions…
my team also brought that idea up about the human inside the bot and i was the one who was going to be inside lol idea but our original design is bout the same as our design now
(plz no one take offense to my name that what my team member call me or something close to that
Our design stayed amazing on track. Not much changed from drawing board to cad to assembly. I’ve really noticed that our team is really great with picking a strategy and sticking with it (not to gloat or anything).
It sounds like that this strategy is inherent flawed, mainly that if there is a flaw in the strategy at the beginning, that flaw stays there. But it also carries with it huge advantages: everyone is always fully supportive of the original idea(whether they originally supported it or not) and does his/her best to make it work. And because our design is gotten by concensus, everyone has had a say in the strategy and no one should feel like their view wasn’t heard. If there are people constantly second guessing the plan while we are finalizing design and building, then we get nothing done. Plus if you perfect the strategy at the beginning, you need not worry about flaws propogating.
The PC Police strike again! With your endless litany of things unsayable and areas untouchable… oh, how I love the PC Police!
Let’s all sit around simpering and equivocating so as not to say anything that would damage anyone’s feelings. “I don’t mean to offend you” and “I certainly hope noone takes offence but” and “oh I’d better not say anything at all”… I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings by saying this, and all references to any groups, racial, sexual, or otherwise, are completely unintentional, so help me God if I were to offend, sob, anyone… what /was/ I going to say?
Have you seen the Lord of the Rings movies? They should be banned! Banned, I say. They make fun of dwarves! Gah, what is the world coming to? Kids these days, grumble grumble.
(S)He was making a joke, and if you are so oversensitive that you find it to be offensive, I can live with that.
Paul Dennis
My fingers have just suffered from numerous cuts and scrapes. 
Our team has more or less stuck to our original design.
Our strategy focus has also stayed the same, a highly offensive scoring robot, and a fairly strong defensive drive base.
In reality, I don’t think our team actually had an original design. All the group meeting were pretty much planning and opinions and strategies. We’re pretty much going with the flow and see how it turns out. A harvester is finally in the process, a launcher is finally being worked on, and a hopper, gasp, is finally being figured out and made. this all started yesterday. Programming did a lot of work for the past three weeks.
First, I would like to say to LightWaves1636 that I am sorry that I was overly harsh in the beginning. I believe that FIRST and Chief Delphi should be a fun place where anyone can join and be accepted, no matter who they are, and not feel alienated by others. I guess I kind of overreacted a little when I first saw this topic…
Anyway, back to the original topic, for our design, we actually broke up into about 6 different groups and had each come up with a different design idea. We then had them all present their ideas to the team as a whole and hung them all up in our lab. We picked apart each design and incorperated them into the robot as we went along, so our robot doesn’t actually resemble any of the orginal designs… just bits and peices of each…
I thought that a linear accelerator would be a possible bot. After realizing the massive power requirements (as I figured that by having no moving parts it would be easy-peasy and efficient).
We are now going with a 4-wheel drive bot (inventor pics) with a catapult-like design. One thing I find interesting is that no other teams are going with this approach (that I know of). It seemed to be more efficient as long as accuracy was good.