A little kickball with a robot pitcher.
We melt down our robot and then sell it to a Nicaraguan drug cartel leader. He doesn’t speak english, so we can normally do a little bit of finessing and make around a $500 profit.
Nailed it
Good fundraising idea! Might have to get my team in on this!
In all reality:
In the past we have had to take apart our non-working robot. Last year we used the parts to build an offseason bot. The offseason bot worked wonderfully, so we keep it as a nice piece to tell sponsors and school board about when they visit our lab. This year’s bot is being modified for offseason competitions, but we will likely keep that since our budget has gotten much bigger and now allows to buy all new parts every year, and the fact that the robot works for demo purposes.
Up to a few years ago we kept all of our ol robots (except 1992. FIRST has that one and won’t give it back). Now we dismantle them during pre season.
I saw that one before at FIRST Headquarters.
Since our robot this year is relatively important to us as it’s our first robot and our first robot that went to the Championship, we’re keeping it as is post-Championship elims.
We’ve kept all but our first few robots intact. We have all of our robots from 2004 to the present in various states of repair at our current workspace. (it is speculated that 2002 and 2003 are still in the Redondo Beach power plant, our previous workspace) The better robots are usually kept downstairs to marvel at (or in the case of '05, repair and restore) while the rest are stored in a loft above our workspace. Our practice robots are built using components from the robots we don’t like cough lunacy cough and previous practice robots.
Functional competition robots are used to practice defense or taken to fundraisers and demos.
We always have at least one running robot for the purposes of drive team training, outreach, and display. 2015 was kind of a dud for fun things to show off, but 2016 looks like it will be really fun to drive and play with.
I’ve seen a few of yours (Vex anyway) at the Honolulu airport.
We always say we’ll keep both of the current year bots operational for events and demos, but its just the competition bot that stays (relatively) assembled. 2014/2015 Comp Bots are still around, but we’ve unfortunately had to scavenge them for VEXpro parts when they get out of stock during Build Season.
I think we’ll keep our 2016 bots running just because they’re so cool to show off, and they fit in a car (which is huge for getting from facilities to everything else).
Depends on the robot. No remains of our 2008 and 2009 robots exist. Stripped-out frames of the 2010, 2011, and 2013 robots remain, although they have no electronics or mechanisms.
Our 2012 robot is still functional, although it’s been through some abuse modifications. It’s great for outreach, and although it was pretty bad at its own game, it’s got a mean cleat shot if you can get it over a defense.
The 2014 bot is in need of extensive repairs, after destroying its own pull-back mechanism at an outreach event (nobody was hurt). However, its powertrain is still in good shape, so we use it for driver practice and prototype shenanigans. The yoga ball makes for great crowd interaction, when there’s enough room. The clone practice bot has been stripped down to the chassis and is also used for prototyping.
The 2015 robot is still in near-perfect condition, and we plan on keeping it that way indefinitely. The roborio has been removed for this year’s practice bot, but the rest of it remains. The practice robot was kept around briefly for a stint at R2OC as team 8338, but has since been fully disassembled.
The 2016 practice robot is currently in about 100 different pieces after being cannibalized for champs, and we are likely to keep the competition robot around for outreach, as it’s very portable, relatively safe, and has a great chassis for the outdoors.
Side note- Last I knew, 1625 still had their 2006 robot fully functional, and used it as a defense bot for some pre-bag and tag practice in 2014. Anyone know if that thing is still around? It certainly deserves a nod among historic FRC robots that are still functional.
We’ve got shells of '11, '12, '14, '15, and a pair of '16 robots (one competition, one practice). '14 and '15 could probably be operational within a weekend with some scavenging from the shopbot frames (drivebases used for offseason projects). '12 was a demo bot up until a couple years ago, but no longer functions.
I’ve got a funny feeling that '16 will be around for a while, though.
We disassemble our robots usually for parts.
I wonder why…
Really depends on the robot.
We have the frame/kicker for our 2010 bot floating around. The only remains of our 2011-2013 bots are the shooters/claws. 2014 bot is fully functional and can be ready to go in a matter of minutes. 2015 bot was taken apart some time last December, and both 2016 bots are still up and running.
Demos, fundraising and driver’s practice.
Robots are the perfect visual aid for getting students excited about STEM, fundraising and keeping our students excited about robots when they get to drive them!
We keep those that are good for demos. 2013 and 2016 are great demo robots because they fit in more vehicles and play nice. 2014 fits in the mini-vans and likes to play ball with kids.
2016 already did one demo and the kids had a great time playing ball with her. We will also visit some sponsors and do some fundraising with her soon. She is in maintenance to handle the rigors of demos, but will remain mostly the same until after the off-season events in the Fall and then become a dedicated demo robot.
2015 did not fit easily in vehicles and no one was fond of him, he was cannibalized for parts for our practice bot this year.
We don’t have a lot of space and are currently working on a new home for 2012. And, we will finally dissemble 2010 this summer, because he lost his home.
We keep the recent robots we like (2010, 2014) for quite a bit of time, and sometimes convert them to a practice robot for a season (We used our 2010 robot to help our drivers train this year while our robot was being built) The robots we do not like (2015, 2009) we immediately disassemble after our last off-season event. This years robot is going to stay for a while.
We have all 15 years of them, including the 2013 twins, the 2014 twins, and the 2016 twins. So I think that makes for 18 robots. We had twins in 2006 and 2007 but those practice bots have since been disassembled. 2015 was the tipping point where we really had to make some changes to our storage space. We now have our two 2016 robots lingering about in the lab, because they do not yet have any permanent home.
For the teams that have been around as long as we have and have kept them all, what do you do with them?
In the Fall, we’re hoping to begin refurbishing ours back to functional status starting with the newest and working our way back.
We don’t have space to keep a lot of robots around. This one, and our 2013 robot, will likely stay assembled for a while. They are both good demonstration (or kickball) robots. And both are transportable in smaller vehicles. (I have fit them in my wife’s Mitsubishi Mirage. I would love to have the space to keep all of them together. I have seen 1629’s beautiful build space with their old robots on display. Very cool.
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