Hi everyone, I am new to VEX but am loving it so far. I have been doing it for a month or so as a STEM project in my classroom and hope to have a mini robot wars competition - pupils vs parents. Pupils have exhausted all the builds and are trying to design their own based on research…one group saw a robot that looks like a simplish drivetrain with perhaps a dumper modification…it was on you tube and it could scoop up 4 balls at once and transport them. This may be too big for our ideas but they want to make one with ability to scoop 2 or 3…They are bypassing all of my knowledge so is there any advice for building something like this? A modified dumper looks ideal but I am unsure if modified Linq qould be easiest for them, Help lol They are just new and want a robot with impressive ability in its first few trials lol
Really, they have to just start small and adapt, then adapt again. I suggest starting with the clawbot, and then changing the claw. It took us about 5 rebuilds, and 6 months of working 3-5 days per week to get a really good forklift that could reliably get the hex balls. They learned so much though. If you want to go faster, maybe modify the task/game.
I agree to just start with something that they have a solid design for (like the Linq or Clawbot) and modify, modify, modify! If they are looking for impressive results fast and have low knowledge, probably that is best way (use a known solid design with some modifications). As Claymarks said, changing the task can also be good - maybe picking up 2 balls at a time instead of 4?
There is a post the jrp62 made awhile back about a drivetrain competition, where you build multiple types of drivetrains (he lays out several, complete with plans and code) and then run various trials to see which one does best at which thing. Doing something like that could be neat for a parent/pupil war. http://www.vexiqforum.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/7876-drivetrains-project
We’re in our 3rd year now and each year we’ve had any new team members start by building the Clawbot. We’ve also built (and rebuilt) oodles of different drivetrains, and we’ve occasionally built the fun HexBug kits (like the crossbow). Then take those ideas and concepts and start trying out new things! Unfortunately, you often won’t get anything super impressive the first few times (or even the next few… or the next!) unless you’ve already got some solid robotics and engineering experience. Since on my team we are all just making it up as we go along (no professional mentors to tell us our ideas are cray-cray, just common sense at work!), we often will throw a dozen potential solutions at a problem before finding one we like well enough to stick with. It can be a time consuming process! 
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