d e s i g n

One of our many designs
   (one time or another we'll put up the other designs that we went through...)

Important features to our robot:

1. The body of the robot was kept simple but really strong and stable. It's small and elegant with one leg being made out of just one wall of legos so that it's thin enough to easily stay close to the wall and go over the balls.
    We were able to pull off the sexy, slender look by using gears as wheels. That's riiiiiiight, one side of our robot was rollin' on homemade wheels of tape and gears.
    Our robot was fashionable. Before we went to qualify and it worked, it catwalked up the ramp.

2. The huge @ss gaping hole in the middle allowed us to contain the ball in the middle of our robot when checking for our color and picking it up.

3. Our contraption for picking up the ball... GENIUS! To pick up the balls we used a "mouth". The jaws are attached to an axle which is rotated by a motor-driven gear system. The jaws were connected to each other with rubber bands and snapped shut to trap the ball.
    Our ferocious fish starts out with its jaws pulled back open beyond 180 degrees. Thaaat's right people, w'ere ready to attack. Don't be scurrred! When a ball is underneath the mouth, the gear system rolls up the chain to pull the jaws up and back into the closed position. As the mouth closes it snaps shut on the ball. Snapping shut means triggering the mechanism that lifts up the ball so that it's protected by the "stomach" of our robot and it can be carried away.

4. So how the heck do we get it in the lava pit? Simple people, our robot was soooo well designed that when the motor driven gear system quickly releases the chain, the impact of the jaws hitting the lava pit is enough to dislodge the ball. AND THEN WE WIN!