About our Robot

Each year as part of the FIRST Robotics Competition, Team 228 must build an entirely new robot from scratch. Six long weeks of designing, machining, fabricating, wiring, and programming go into the creation of our team's robots. When the robot is shipped at the end of each build season, we are hardly done. We always seek to improve our robots, to add new features, to make our drive trains faster, our arms more powerful, and our programming more extensive during the official Fix-It windows or after the competitions during the post-season.

Learn more about Gus Eight

Early on in the build season, Team 228 asked ourselves "How can we create a robot that set's our team apart from the rest?" We could have picked one or two tasks, and then been satisfied. But what fun is mediocrity? After coming off our very successful 2005 season, we wanted to shoot for the moon, and build a robot that would dominate on the field. Although our team wanted to primarily focus on center goal scoring and ball pickup from the floor, we also made sure that our robot could make it onto the ramp, score into the side goal, and hold up to 18 balls at a time. Here is Team 228's 2006 Aim High Robot: G8: Gus Eight.

Gus Eight can score in every possible way in Aim High - it can store up to 18 balls at a time in our innovative spiral ball hopper. We can shoot one ball every 3/4 of a second into the center goal. Our robot can also score balls into the corner goals without having to worry about breaking the plane of the goal. To replenish its supply of balls, G8 Gus Eight can pick up 2-3 balls at a time from the floor. At the end of the match, our robot was also designed to get onto (and off of if needed) the ramp easily and without tipping.

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Throughout much of the competition season, Gus Eight was unable to perform at it's full potential due to a few minor manufacturing and design flaws. One of these flaws was that initially the center elevator jammed often during the UTC Regional, later this polycord design was converted to a series of wooden rollers. Another minor design flaw was that the shooter on the robot did not have enough compression on the balls, so our firing distance was not as much as we hoped. The addition of an extra piece of Lexan into the design was enough to double our effective shooting distance.

By the time our last competition for the year came around, our robot and drive team had risen to the top tier; at the Bash at the Beach competition our robot was able to score five balls in the center goal in autonomous without leaving the starting box. Our performance outside of autonomous had risen as well, and we placed in third at the competition.

Quick Stats

Drive Train

Offense

Defense

Drive Team