We are Team #46 on paper but the Mon Calamari Cruisers at heart. In the beginning, we lacked direction, purpose, and housetraining. We needed a leader — we needed... an Admiral. We passionately constructed the Admiral Ackbot out of Lego and brawn to inspire us with his eternal proactive spirit.
Our robot has personality. We strive for aesthetic beauty in both software and hardware, perhaps to the detriment of testing and performance. But what good is winning, if not with style?
Previous experience led us to believe that a two wheel with caster design would have the optimal mix of maneuverability, durability and ease of construction. It allows us to both turn in place and describe any arbitrary turn in forwards or reverse. This is a remarkable amount of flexibility from only three wheels.
We built a frame around the components, which lead to a more compact but less modular design. Several iterations of design, included an unauthorized drop test (which we did not survive), brought us to the current small and strong frame. The batteries are placed towards the back to balance out the enormous arm. The center of gravity is kept low to defend against flip-bots.
The epic centerpiece of our robot's functionality, the immense retractable arm is double jointed and manipulated by a gear and chain system that allows the entire arm to be retracted or extended with a single twitch of the front servo. The arm is ideal for corraling and transporting balls to various areas of the playing field as well as for harrassing and groping the opponent's robot to suppress its delinquent behavior.
The robot with a true warrior spirit is in a constant state of heightened alertness. Two ever-watching eyes perched atop forward-facing stalks theoretically transmit real-time high-definition images of the playing field through ficticious optic nerves to a non-existent cerebral mass beneath the Harpy Board.
The only thing in between the Mon Calamari Cruisers and victory is our strategy. Ideally, we had planned to use the enormous arm to sweep the middle five balls at the start of the match, then turn quickly around to defend our turf. We then attack the opponent for 20 seconds, and perform another sweep in the final seconds of the round.
Using the RF location data and the microgyro, we are able to move to any waypoint on the board. Unfortunately, the RF suffers from high lag, and general suckitude. We hope that it will work as planned during the rounds, and we have a similar strategy implemented in a robot-centered reference frame.
Because Mike is a Linux devotee, we are using Subversion for code storage and versioning, and all the software was written on his laptop running Ubuntu.
One late night in lab, Andy decided to make Lego replicas of our favorite Star Wars ships. His X-Wing, Tie Fighters, Y-Wing, A-Wing, and Snowspeeder have fought several brave battles over the linoleum floor of 38-600. We lost a lot of good men out there...
 Lock S-Foils into attack position. |
 Look at the size of that thing! |
 Cut the chatter, Red Two. |
 Accelerate to attack speed. This is it, boys! |
 Got him! |
 You're all clear kid. Now, let's blow this thing and go home. |
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• Mike "Red Two" Klein  |
• Andy "Unnecessarily Hostile" Lee |
• Josh "Sasquatch" Levinger |
• Jack Bauer
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