The Inspire Award will be given to a team that demonstrates outstanding leadership through action to other teams. This team will be identified by their peers as a leader in innovative and creative design in the robotics community. This team serves as an example to others and embraces the concept of cooperative learning. Cooperative Learning will be based on inspiring other teams’ designs or openly sharing their design ideas with others. While local/regional events are permitted to give this award, it will be given primarily at the World Championship. In order for a team to be eligible for this award, they must post their design ideas throughout the season on the VEX Forum. Teams will be given stronger consideration based on how early and often they post their designs. The Judging panel will interview potential recipients (at World Championship), based on the nominations through team balloting, and choose the team that stands out as the most worthy recipient.
Key Criteria:
Proven record of posting design features at the VEX Forum
Pictures and content posted at VEX Forum
Nominations from other teams
Observations of design inspiration by referees and other field personnel[/INDENT]
It’s time to officially start nominating some teams. To be an official nomination, it needs to include the following information:
Your team number and name (nominations can only be made by members and mentors of active VRC teams)
The team number and name you are nominating. This award is not for an individual.
Specifically, how your team was inspired by them.
A link or name of a thread on the forum of at least one example of how this nominated team posted specific information on the VEX forum that you found inspirational.
A link to supporting pictures, drawings, etc. either in VEX Forum Gallery (preferred) or elsewhere (such as YouTube).
If we at RECF can’t find your supporting links, we may have to reject the nomination, since the award specifically requires robot information to have been posted on the VEX forum by the nominated team. Links to non-Forum sites are OK, as long as someone had posted the links on the VEX forum.
This thread will serve as the official Q&A for this award.
No posts or other online information created after March 5, 2011, will be considered in making this award. We don’t want teams to start being “inspirational” now that nominations and voting is starting – they should have started a while ago.
Community voting will be a big part of this award, and we will post a link soon. Voting will start in mid-March, and the award will be announced at the World Championship.
We’re very excited about this new award, and we look forward to your nominations.
Have you, or anyone you know, attempted to keep track of when various teams have publicized their designs here in the Vex Forum (or wiki) by publishing a picture or linking to another site?
If you were to publish those eligible teams’ names and numbers, some folks might wake up and give them credit for inspiring spin-off designs.
team 1103 (titan) https://vexforum.com/t/team-1103-robot/18347/1
the idea of using chain and linear slides to make a mechanism that is fast and powerful (hang)
also uses a pneumatic claw!
not sure if it counts because it was leaked, but i nominate them not for their design, but for their strategy.
within a day of seeing the post and their “abilities”, we have come up with a strategy to counter that, and in a week, added tweaks to our robot that can equal (?) their feat.
i nominate them because they got our team thinking, thinking of ways to improve and thinking about strategy. this in turn, gave us ideas for major strategies at worlds
do they have a pneumatic NEEDLE?
if not, this also got us thinking and we have come up with a METHOD of using pneumatics to power a needle design! (so the extra motors can be used for hang)
the idea is the same “seed” that got us into thinking of more inspirational ideas that we thought was impossible](https://vexforum.com/showthread.php?p=156838#post156838)
We went to Pan Pacific this year and saw a 1973 robot that had a 4-bar arm that could reach backwards and climb the ladder. Last year’s Green Eggs robot inspired us to build a holonomic drivetrain this year which has been a lot of fun to program and drive. Free Range inspired us to build an H holonomic drive as well (our Team B). And 1103 recently did a terrific job of describing their chain driven multi-stage elevator. We really need to try out that concept!
Downingtown Area Robotics “VEXMEN” team 81 would like to nominate 677 the for the 2011 VRC Wold Championship Inspire award.
They are villains.
They come to regional tournaments with the most creative, well built and top preforming designs from day one. They press every advantage. Exploit every rule. Dominate every challenge. Their designs are gawked at, photographed and copied. When match lists are handed out teams look first in fear to see if they have to play them and then in secret joy to see if they are allied with them.
Everyone wants to see them lose for once. They are the NY Yankees of VEX Mid Atlantic region.
They force everyone to up their game. To try harder. Not to rest. One more point in autonomous. (I hear the 677 can get 22). The 677 have holonomic, I want to try that!
Team 81 uses a 4 bar linkage lift and holonomic drive inspired by the 677 design. We spent hours looking at photos they have posted on this forum. Or that others may have posted of them. We have watched the youtube videos of the Mid Atlantic and other events they have played to study their strategy.
We have even braved going up to them in the pits and talked to them face to face. They were nothing but pleasant and professional. They were happy to discuss our robot with us complemented us on our attempted copy of them and gave us ideas on how we could improve our design. This makes it harder to hate them but we do anyway. They are too good.
Every event we are inspired to beat 677. Some day.
the super simple hang method using a transmission drive winch
Thank you kindly. I would also like to mention the early season programming skills video that got us onto the VEX Facebook page and JVN’s blog and the [Pan Pacific Driver Skills run that I believe is still the highest score posted with video.
In terms of nominations, I second 44 and 1107B, both of which have kept us thinking about new ways to play the game. Both teams brought fairly new strategies and combinations of mechanisms to the table and weren’t afraid of posting them.](“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htNqntzfYvI”)
another nonination:
theotherguy’s render at the very beginning of round up which inspired lots of teams to hang from the side https://vexforum.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=4591&c=8
and they also have a solid needle of four slide rails that many teams copied screw for screw at the beginning of the season
I thought I posted this already, but I’m not seeing it – I must have not hit “Submit”.
Team 438b would like to nominate 599D. We used a 4-bar lift and claw (developed independently) that was similar to theirs, but were impressed by and would have liked to implement a collector like theirs if time had allowed.
As one of the mentors for 677 I want to thank RobotBob and VEXMEN team 81 for nominating us for the Inspire Award. We appreciate your recognition of our abilities.
However we now get 48 points in autonomous as per the NJ State Championship this past Saturday. Here is the youtube link.
We “love”… I mean “hate”…lol…you and all of the other Downingtown teams too. You are a pleasure to compete with and we look forward to seeing you all at worlds.
The video is of a 1 minute programming skills run.
It is an excellent example of a line-following autonomous X-holo drive.
Very nice!
Can you describe your sensor package? Any other programming details?
Every wheel has it’s own encoder, though I’m only using the two in the front due to my own inability to learn PID (though the new thread on it may help change that). I have an ultrasonic sensor on both the front and right side. The lift’s axle has a potentiometer on it, and I have three line followers a bit scattered around (also plan on adding more).
Once our order for a few more sensors arrives I plan on somewhat altering the latter part of the routine… and also working to speed the entire thing up so I don’t run out of time before scoring another stack xD
I would like to second that nomination for 677. They are constantly forcing us to up our game. For instance, last Saturday my team was the number one seed at the NJ Championship going into alliance selection. We had the opportunity to ally with 677 and instead chose to go with 169A (mentored by members of KTOR, who are awesome!). We ended up losing in the finals to 677 by one tube and then by one point! It is that kind of competition that pushes us to do even better, especially in autonomous mode (that was what lost us the second match). Thank you guys for always giving everyone a challenge and inspiration.
