This is our initial robot. Not much to look at, is it? There is no way this 'bot would have even qualified for the competition. The motors are attached to the frame with tape. Granted the picture is only the frame of our intitial robot.

At this stage, we were more interested in making sure the robot actually moved when we connected the motors to the gearboxes, could communicate with the RF signals, and generally didn't fall apart when it moved than any actual design capable of meeting the requirements for the competition. That and making sure it played nicely with walls.

The end result, after much blood (from a certain team member from a certain wound caused by a certain incident with a Leatherman Wave that we shall not speak of), sweat, and three days spent by Bertha in lab arguing with the code, was a rather cute lil' robot that played the Final Fantasy victory tune, had a disturbing tendency to pop wheelies because it changed direction so fast, and didn't quite play as nicely with walls as we would have liked.