2625A Tech-Know Commandos robot unveil

Recently We have been messaged quite a few times about our unique robot design so we have decided just to go ahead and unveil our robot.

So far this season we have:
qualified 1st and won the Trinity High School Granite State Vex Robotics Competition undefeated, and received the excellence award as well
we also qualified 2nd and won the QCC Worcester VRC Scrimmage undefeated and won the excellence award there as well.

Our robot BOB was named after our recently deceased teacher Mr. Berry and features an adjustable suspension, crossing parallel bars and a horizontal intake. Our robots story starts with a CAD drawing in June of 2011 which was used as a template to build our first prototype (in July) where we ran into several problems with the lift especially. after a day or two of tweaking and redesign of the inner core of the frame we finally emerged victorious with a working robot. several intake changes has taken place since then and countless hours of driver practice has turned BOB into the robot it is today.

Here is some media of BOB:
Granite State VEX Regional Final 1
Granite State VEX Regional Final 2










[QCC Dec. 17th scrimmage

I will add more media when its done uploading (its taking some time)](“Dec. 17th QCC Regional Finals Match 2 - YouTube”)

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Very, very unique design. The only comment I would have is that your intake treads seem to be a little slow when you try to score, but the bot looks solid

It looks like an elevation robot remake for gateway. I like it. :slight_smile:

By the way, how did Team 56 perform? We lost to them in the finals at the USM VRC.

Wow, awesome robot! I had an intake idea very similar to this. Well executed design.

i recognize team 40!
they had the the bucket bots + hang at worlds for round up!

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I like Bob. Now we know why Vex came out with the turntables:)

It has a little disadvantage by its swingout and requires some driver compensation when approaching a goal but it is very accurate and stable.

Have you had any success descoring? It would seem an extendable lance mounted on top of your intake would help make this robot more formidable.

thank you and our intake seems to have been sub-par from day one so currently we are constantly redesigning it to be as fast (or faster) than the New Zealand design robots.

Thanks, team 56 did pretty well as always, they came with a pretty cool robot but we were able to beat them in the semi finals because there intake is very fast but the rest of the robot is slower because of that but none the less they are a really good team.

Yes that’s team 40 they’ve always been a major competitor for us and are great to work with and a pain to work against they brought 10 teams to that regional.

The Turntables did make life a lot easier for us during this build but they still have there draw backs like space and only having a 5.5 reduction ratio.
the swing out our driver has mastered working around and we use it to our advantage as much as we can, our arm broke (due to a loose shaft) in the QCC finals match one and we used the arm as a blocking mechanism and it worked extremely well.we have not seen the need to descore in a competition yet but in practice we are able to do it. we have been talking about adding a fork for months but never felt the need

Reminds me of 44 Green Egg’s elevation robot. Good job!!! I really like the horizontal intake, really fast and reliable.

Max size box with 4"OTO wheels each side , only center wheels powered? what ratio?
4 turntables for hinges, wow. Hinges would take much less space.
Do you have any elastic for lift assist?

yes the middle wheel is the only one driven, the drive train ratio is 1.25 (15 tooth sprocket into a 12) we have a slight elastic assist at the back of the arm (its hard to see with the cortex there and all)

Yes it does :stuck_out_tongue:

I really like your design. Looks VERY professional!

Forgive Typos
Typed On Nook

What does that even mean? ‘Typed on Nook’???

And you put that after EVERY post you have. You can either put it in your signature, only go on the forum when your not on ‘‘nook’’, or just spell correctly and not have to type that!!!

A Nook is a book reader. It is really (Really) hard to go back and make sure everything is spelled correctly, and I do not type that on “every” post. Just when I am on my Nook.

I try to spell it correctly, but it is hard on a Nook.

Seeing as your robot is so unique, can you justify your reasoning behind such a design? It does not seem as fast as the New Zealand robots we saw back in October. And based on the videos, it is not as fast as a couple of robots in my region as well. Are there advantages to this design that you have found? Or potential capabilities that you have not added yet that could take it to a level left unreached by other designs? I am not trying to insult your design, it certainly performs well, I only ask because I would like to hear your reasoning.

trust me we had the same thought as you guys about adding a descore fork. We were going to add one before the LA championship (73 team event), but we never had time to add it. The competition was a very competitive competition, and it was not easy. In our division semi-final, we realized that descoring is key, considering you can descore the doubler and put a negator. Though we won our division/made it to the tournament final match, in the finals we probably would have won the first match if 1138B had a descore fork… That being said, i hope you guys consider practicing descoring/adding a descorer(if needed), because it will be key at bigger competitions and at worlds. :slight_smile: Good luck, and see you guys at worlds.

we actually designed our robot before almost any videos online (our robot was completed about 4-6 weeks after the nations first competition) we decided not to change the design after seeing those other robots (why fix whats not broken) plus this design is unique to us and we want to see how it will compete against the others. originally we designed it around the strategy of owning the 20" goals. Its also really accurate (some designs offer a possibility of exhausting too fast or at an angle and miss the goal) BOB is also extremely good at playing Defense and we plan on that helping us in the last 30 seconds of a match.

Thanks for the input, we might just go along with the fork after all. and see you at worlds too!

Ok. I was just wondering. Good luck this year!

good luck to you too!

I’m glad you went through with your design! Looks great! I have had many people send this to me already!

Good luck!

  • Andrew