Hoopty was the team’s 2011 robot which was most notable for it’s claw. This claw was rotated on an arm attached to the front of the robot and could grab onto the inner tubes used in this year’s game using a pneumatic actuator that opened and closed the gripper. During competition this claw did its job of successfully placing the tubes on their respective pegs and even to this day, that claw and armature hang on the wall of the robotics workshop. In addition, the robot also had its own minibot which was tasked with climbing one of the 4 vertical poles positioned on the field. The minibot the team designed consisted of a light switch wired to a small motor and battery. When the switch was on, the robot would climb up the pole using the motor, but the instant the switch hit the top of the pole, the robot would turn off and slide back down.
Logomotion was the 2011 FRC challenge. In this challenge, 2 alliances of 3 robots each were tasked with playing square, circular, and triangular inner tubes on rows of pegs positioned above the driver stations at the ends of the field. If these inner tubes were positioned such that they created the FIRST logo, bonus points would be awarded on top of the points gained for placing the inflatable on one of the pegs. The point values would also increase based on the height of the peg that the tube was placed on. The game started off with a short autonomous period where the robots functioned without human input to deliver an “ubertube” onto a peg. If the robot succeeded in placing this tube on a peg, additional points would be awarded. At the end of the match, teams could deploy a minibot. These bots were simple, self-contained robots that were released by the main bot onto a poll. If the team’s minibot could quickly race to the top of the poll and trigger the sensor, points would be awarded. Depending on if another minibot had already made it to the top of one of the poles before, fewer and fewer points would be awarded. This made having a fast minibot extremely important. At the end of the match, the alliance with the most points won. The full rules manual for this game can be found here.