Ever done something pretty stupid or funny involving robotics?
I’ll start of: Sitting in the pit at Florida regional and for some absolutely retarded reason I pick up a can of electronics cleaner and i spray it in my mouth. I thought it was canned CO2 (the stuff used to clean off electronics) and my mouth was wicked dry so i wanted some quick air, or course if it was canned CO2 i probably would have frozen my tongue so overall it was a stupid idea. I spit it out and ran to the bathroom, luckily i didnt ingest any. Ya were talking senior driver and build team captain doin that. You would of thought i would have cut off a few fingers too during build season. I also tried putting a battery on the charger and touched the connectors making a shower of sparks and fusing the two connectors together, trying to pull them apart i made even more parks, i was even lucky enough to do it on camera so i got a lot of laughs out of it later that night at the hotel. I know someone else has done something stupid so lets here it!
Ummmm… from a programmers perspective, forgetting to put in stop code (aka, pwm##=127) is up there for me, beings it is VERY stupid, and easy to forget. Involved an Edubot off my coffee table, and more than a few others
For Building, ahh geez theres a bunch:
- leaving a 7/16" wrench (are there any other sizes in FIRST???) in the hardest to reach place in the robot. that stayed there for a while
- milling a slot in a vise…
- tryin to drive a nail and hitting it wrong and zinging it across the room, scaring the crap outta everybody
- Holesaws, lol Paul
Driving:
Plenty of mistakes (who doesnt make em??), but accidently climbing the 12" step instead of the 6 is the only one i can think of.
Who else has em?
Well someone tried to kill me, and when I say that I mean someone catapulted a really sharp box cutter off the table at me. It sailed just shy of my face/neck so now we can laugh about it since I didn’t bleed to death. Unfortunately I was the only one in it’s path.
Norrrrwelll.
Wow, there is no way I can name all my dumb mistakes in one post…
Lemmie see…
Unplugging the wrong wire polarity when hooking up motors…
Cut off circulation in my hand with a tie wrap…
Become spontaneously confused over dumb little things (lots of instances of this :o )
Burnt my finger a little with a soldering iron…
It goes on long after this…
It goes to say that I am a clumsy person too…
A fellow team alumnus and I went to visit our team at the beginning of build season. Our engineer mentor had cut tetra joints out of a plastic that was stiffer than the joints provided in the kit, so we had to use a torch to heat the plastic and make it more flexible. While assembling a tetra, my friend had unknowingly put his crotchal area in contact with a still hot plastic joint. The cursing and ridicule that followed are inappropriate for posting, but I remember it as one of the highlights of the season.
We were making our frame rails in the CNC machine. They were so long they required two setups/operations. So, after both rails get the first operation (which includes countersinking) done, I put one in the next setup/operation and after its done I look at it and say “that’s funny, those holes aren’t countersunk.” Well, sure enough I put the frame rail in the vise upside down and it was the only piece of material we had and it was like 10:00 PM and the frame was supposed to be done a day before. So, we fixed it by doing a little bit of a rework on it and you’d probably never know the differenc now.
That:
my friend had unknowingly put his crotchal area in contact with a still hot plastic joint
was very good.
I also think that with an IFI rep standing right behind me, in response to “nobody knows how the arena controllers work” replying, "lots of people at ChiefDelphi have a pretty good idea.
Heres my story:
I was up on a ladder cleaning the huge 1278 tower plexi plates.
(Anyone at buckeye knows what im talking about, about a 14 foot tower with Plexiglas plates with the numbers 1278 cut out of vinyl on each plate)
So im up there cleaning the very top with about a foot between me and the tower, a teammate was up in a loft storage area above the shop office playing around with a very thin flexible piece of wood when he gets the bright idea to smack it against a pipe railing that was up there. Well all i hear is WISSHHH and a brown blur goes right between me and the tower. He broke it on the pole, and it flew, spun to vertical right as it passed me and the tower and fell down about halfway across the room.
Thank god it didn’t hit me!
Another team member and I once had to drill a 1/2" hole through some 1/4" aluminum. After drilling for a good twenty minutes, using lots of A-9, we finished the hole. We wondered why it was so hard to drill the hole, until we checked the drill and realized it was in reverse 
It was my rookie year so…
Me personaly I haven’t done stupid things… 
…but one of my friends on the team did though.
So i was standing in our robot room waiting for something to do and my friend and his INTERN engineer helper were trying to put the camera on our practice bot. They needed to drill a whole in this metal so the casing of the camera and screw on. So the INTERN engineer had my friend drill it. He put the bit in and started tightning it with this thightener tool. Then the INTERN engineer said use ur hand it’s quicker. So he does. While the drill is going he goes to grab the place where you tighten it at and he grabs the drill bit. As he grabs it he presses the trigger even farther doen cutting his thumb. All of a sudden he yells “THAT WAS SO STUPID!!!” we all start laughing (even him so don’t be all :ahh: about it lol) we get a bandaid and starp it onto his thumb. hes all better now but i thought it was pretty stupid.
Our mechanical team needed the camera case, so they could make the mount for it. We took the camera out of the case so we could still use it while they’re making the mount. We put the camera on the circuit board. Then the camera jumps off (I swear, it did it by itself 
) the circuit board onto the uncovered battery terminals. Some smoke, crackles, and sparks later we’re holding a $200 piece of junk.
At SBPLI, me and Rob (coach) were setting up the controls and the laptop, while Tom (driver) was positioning robot. We’re sitting there waiting for the controls to kick on and sync with the robot…waiting…waiting…
Tom comes back and notices they’re out.
A moment of panic, and then.
Rob: I don’t see the LEDs on…
Me: Tom you did remember to turn the robot on right?!
Tom: ::blank look:: Oohhh <insert stream of curses as he runs out on the field>
Sadly, he did it four more times that day.
Sounds like you’ve had some misfortunate events. In the future do not use the word “retarded”.
Please next time use a thesaurus to look up a word that will fit into your writing piece.
Thanks.
We once thought an electrical error was a programming error. Not until I ripped one of the pwm cables did we realize that they were switched. Although I am quite personal to when the whole entire team let the frame for our robot roll off the table. Four people standing around the thing rolled off the table. Now you have to realize that this was just a frame and four wheels with nothing attached. Also, personally I sent a paper stable through my thumb. I was playing with a little midget stapler and placed my thumb over the hole and fired the stapler. I wondered where the staple went but then I realized it went almost all the way through my skin. I ripped it out and my thumb has been the same since then.
Please next time use a thesaurus to look up a word that will fit into your writing piece.
Yes lets use the word asinine. I love that word.
Alright so my story wasn’t really dumb, but it was more me being creative. At the Midwest regional this past weekend i went up to see my old team (461) and my friends team that hes working with (1646) and well during finals. there was a point where there were some electrical problems with the drivers stations. the camera guys were panning around the stands showing people dancing and having fun. well the camera pointed at me and so i’m just sitting there and i had to quickly think of something crazy/funny to do. so i turned my head to the side and put my finger next to my nose and made it look like i was picking my nose. the crowd erupted in laughter… if you were seeing the webcast you might of seen me. hahaha. it was a good weekend and great competition!
plenty of stupid things going on with us heres just a little list
putting holes in the wall with random things (PVC, robot, etc)
letting programmer drive alittle (big wheely almost flip backwards and burnt carpet)
drilling a 1/2 hole in plexiglass (not lexan) without plastic covering
shocking people with 9v battery
cart rides
capping the center goal in a 9ft ceiling room
turning the shower on in our room (2 soaked people but no damage to robot)
trying to act out a safety animation
stuffin someone in box and duct taping it shut
locking myself outside…when it was snowing
tryin to calibrate the camera through a window
pneumatic can crusher
pneumatic person, chair pusher
sparkin victor then deciding it was fine and using it
lifting goal above someones head
latex tube of death
white castle stacks
just to get you thinking
Y’all want a dumb story?
Picture it: 2004 Championship, Archimedes Field. Dean’s arrived on his Segway, and naturally folks around are crowding to say hello and et cetera. I attempt, but as a real-time scorekeeper, I also needed to be fifteen feet away within about ten seconds for the soon-to-start match. So the match is about to start, and I’m fighting my way through the crowd, bumping into people as I try to get behind the scoring table. At the end of that crowd was a certain denim-clad fellow on a Segway, who I wound up bumping into a little harder than the others.
Thank goodness Segways can balance!