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Our first robot. "The Chicken Coop" named after the excessive amount of chicken wire on it, was built to play the game Overdrive. In Overdrive, we had to design a robot to hit large balls off of monkey bars and roll them around a race track. We created this robot with a pneumatically powered arm that would hit the ball off the bars and then move it around track. Overall for our rookie year we placed 40 out of 49.
Vanderbuilt, named after one of our most helpful mentors Fred Vander, played in the game Lunacy. What our robot had to do was catch"moon rocks" (balls) and shoot them into other robots trailers. We created our robot with a large open top to catch the incoming "moon rocks" which led to a container that could hold around 5-7 "moon rocks." Then the cannon on Vanderbuilt, powered by two rotating rubber pipes, would shoot the "moon rocks" into the opposing side's trailers. This robot ended up placing 28 out of 37 in the San Diego regional and went on to play in the LA regional where it recieved 44 out of 60th place.
Taylormade, named after another great mentor Wayne Taylor who contributed a lot to this robot, was built to play Breakaway. Breakaway was based off of soccer, so our robot had to kick soccer balls into small goals as well as go through two foot high tunnels and traverse two foott tall bumps. We decided to go with a simple robot with a pneumatically powered kicker. Placing higher than any robot before, Taylormade recieved 14 out of 49 places. Ever since the competition, this robot has been rebuilt to climb over the bumps and fit under the tunnels. It is now currently still in operation and is still used frequently for demonstrations.
The Roguepogue, continuing the tradition, was named after our dedicated software mentor Mr.Pogue. It took part in the game Logomotion where innertubes were given to the robot to be hung on pegs which were at 6 different heights. In addition, teams could build a second "mini-bot" that is deployed by the main robot at the end of the game and climbs a pole for bonus points. We chose to take on both the main and bonus objective when designing this robot. In the end we decided on a forklift system controlled by cables and pulleys to hang the innertubes and a clamping system that the minibot used by clamping down its traction wheels to the pole and turning those wheels to climb it. We ended up placing 16 out of 60.
