Introduce Yourself

I thought I'd kick this off, so here goes.

I'm Jeff, and I was President of the Ransom Everglades Robotics & Engineering Team from fall '05 to spring '07, and was a member from fall '03 to spring '07. I worked on two 15lb robots there, X-Contamination and Coriolis. My role on X-Contamination was to design the prototype weapon and hardware layout (push everything together as close as possible), as well as assembly and later on, some of the upgrades. My role on Coriolis was the total design of a new, low-cost robot; may I never speak of it again... .

I also served as one of the 'idea guys' on the team, and as such helped flesh out some of the other robots' designs.

I am currently enrolled at Georgia Tech, and will graduate with a degree in Mechanical Engineering around the year 2011 or 2012.

Hello everyone,

My name is Senai and I was part of the Richardson High School Robotics team from '05 to '08. Our team produced The Blender which won the 2007 BotsIQ battlebots competition and the Best Engineered award.

This year I am a sophomore in college and am building a 15lb robot to compete in the college division against my old team mate from high school who, went to a rival college. This should be interesting.

Other than that, my life is very boring so I won't post it here and waste your precious time trying to read it.

SenaiERI
SenaiERI2@gmail.com

All right, I'll join the fun.

I'm Dan, and I'm still a senior in HS at Pine View School in Osprey, FL. I've been club president since '07, and heavily involved in the club since '06. I redesigned the club's bot Copperhead II - and won BotsIQ 2008 with it. We are definitely bringing Copperhead to San Francisco for Battlebots this year. I also designed and did most of the work on a 15 lb bot that I called the Dethinator, a full body spinner which we are going to compete with both at BotsIQ in San Fran and the little-known Miami Youth Fair on March 29th.

My proudest battlebots moment was watching the fifteen pounder that we entered in BotsIQ last year get totally annihilated, and thinking to myself, "This really doesn't bother me because I designed and built this in FOUR DAYS..."

I've come a ways since then.

I started this forum to try and bring people together, and unite this still-underground community once and for all. Let's hope it works. Thanks to all 7 (!) members who have joined so far!

Hey Dan,

You should bring Deathinator to San Fran. I'd kind of like to fight more than just 3 robots and I'm sure the other guys feel the same way.

It'd have to be after finals of course, and provided my robot is still intact I'd love to go head to head against you.

SenaiERI
SenaiERI2@gmail.com

OHHHHH ANOTHER SPINNER! I'm so excited.

absolutely.
:]

Actually, Eddie Burgess on USF's team is making a 15 lb spinner to take to san fran as well... We should have a triple spin-off...

A 3-way grudge match? It has possibilities. Perhaps we should invite an old monitor and make it a 4-way.

Actually I tried to email Eddie and wish him good luck but his group email account rejected my email. No other contact info is available so if you see him, tell him I said good luck.

SenaiERI
SenaiERI2@gmail.com

Hi, my name is Julien. Im a junior at Pine View high school and in the same club as Dan. I joined the club last year, and though i wasn't able to do very much because of my inexperience i learned a lot. This year i am sort of an assistant leader in the club. Even though I enjoy working in the engineering field i plan on majoring in physics.

eddie's email says it's messorxiii@gmail.com, but his usf email is eburgess@mail.usf.edu

but I will also tell him. He's planning on coming down to the shop where we build our bots to work on his next week.

I am Alan Dreher, a Junior at Pine View School for the Gifted. I am a member of Dan's club(Because this year, it is very much Dan's Club), and am arguably the most active member besides Dan himself(not to say Julien wouldn't be just as active if he could). I am going to spend the next couple weeks trying to learn as much as I possibly can about the electronics and controls of the bot to fill that gap that Eddie Burgess left last year.

I guess him being around next week will be a perfect opportunity for me to grill him about how our controller works.

Anyway, although I am interested in Engineering and enjoy it, I will most likely be majoring in Computer Science. I truly enjoy Computer Science as a class(and I am extremely angry that they will not continue to offer it as a class next year). I am particularly intrigued by the Computer Graphics and AI branches of Computer Science.

To fill the void left by the lack of Computer Science at our school, I have been seriously contemplating creating a XNA Game Development Club at our school. This way, I could appeal to a much large group of students than just the Computer Science kids(Art, Music, Writing, and Acting all have applications within a game, not to mention the general appeal of games). I just need to buy myself a new computer and quickly familiarize myself with the XNA Toolset over the summer though.

But it would be really cool to start that club and do that alongside my place in the Engineering Club(probably as Vice President of the club for next year). At least I know that I would be busy the entire year.

Hey.. my Name is Will. I go to Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove. Carrolton is right down the street from us! I'm on the robotics team (obviously) and have managed to avoid any official offices, although I seem to be running the whole dog-and-pony show at times. I've been doing something mechanical, such as making things or breaking things, since I was born. @ 6, i started doing Lego Mindstorms and was on a Lego League team up until 8th grade. In middle school, I literally ran the club with a friend of mine, Tyler whom, i'll try to convince to get on here, and we taught everybody everything they knew. We went to State Competition both years. I started combat robotics when I was 10 with a Sozbot. Ever since then, I was hooked. i've been going to First Competitions and BotsIQ competitions my entire life, because my dad was an assistant engineer on a first team and helper of BotsIQ teams and organization. I built my first 15 pound robot in 2005, the first year that 15 pounds was a class. Because of this, Tyler and I have more experience in BotsIQ than any other high schoolers we know of, since they graduated as we were going into freshmen year, LIKE JEFF! We have been doing this as long as our Coach, Mr. Dubard has, so it makes things interesting.

There's a lot more I could say, but I'll leave it at that for now. If you have a question for me, just ask..

My names Cody, i graduated from Plum Senior High School near Pittsburgh, PA and was an original member of Plum Robotics. I go to Penn State now for mechanical engineering and im still a technical advisor for Plums botsIQ team. Ive helped with robots Shockwave, Aftershock, and almost exclusively built Shockwave2 myself in 3 weeks (Alex did electronics and someone elsed lathed some of the parts). This year they built Still In Shock, but I didnt build anything on the bot as im now there to "teach" haha

Hey everybody.

I'm
Matt Dughi. Everybody calls me Dughi, or refers to me as "that Guy."
I go to Ransom Everglades with Will. I'm a junior this year, the chief engineer of the RE robotics team. I first got started with robotics in 9th grade with Mr. Dubard, but I had been looking forward to it since my dad (who also works at Ransom) told me about the robotics team, because I don't know if anybody here knows or remembers Erector sets, but I was a huge fan of those and of BattleBots the TV show. I've built 2 robots so far (I was basically captain of the Juggerbot and Brute Force teams), working on a third this year, and for two consecutive summers I've actually helped teach robotics to "underprivileged" high school students, the second summer (2007-2008), I worked directly under Bill and Nola Garcia and Catherine (I believe her last name was Harper?) with another member of Ransom and a student from the previous summer. I also study java programming in school and am pretty good at it, if I do say so myself. I've usually got like 25 tabs open on Firefox and I almost never close a tab, so if you need a quick answer about RE robotics, I'll probably be able to answer you pretty quickly, don't be afraid to ask, I may look like scary because of the scar Will's robot gave me last year, but I swear, I'm not a scary person. If you wanna hear the story about the scar, I don't have a problem with anybody asking about that either.

lmfao! I apologized many times already, but again: SORRY!


Just tell the story.. it's pretty amusing

i moved the story to the "injuries" thread...

we'll have to take a picture tomorrow.. problem is that he has these giant sideburns which "conveniently" cover up the scar.. it's perfectly square too which makes it even funnier!

Dan Curhan wrote:

ouch. post a picture for us who don't know you?

You wouldn't be able to see it in a picture, I essentially have mutton chops now, and you can't see it in a photo, I'll show you at the competition. I'm hard to miss, I'll be the one guy there with a ponytail; I look like a samurai.

we are cutting that all off long before then! if not, i'll have to accidentally loosen on of the new teeth, if you catch my drift..

I'm Sean. I go to Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove. I'm on the robotics team. I stated robotics 9th grade, but knew a sufficient amount about robotics in 8th grade. I went to State Competition last year (it was my first year). My robot was named X-Fortification. It was 13 lbs but entered into the 15 lb class. It was shaped like a triangle and had a wedge. It was pretty much indestructible as I had the amazing idea of using spring steel as my armor. I still got defeated 2 out of my 3 matches because the bottom of my wedge got bent into the ground (the only part not indestructible, other than my wheels). With X-Fortification, I won 2nd place at the Miami Youth Fair last year (that was the only award i have gotten for robotics). I am now working on a 15 lb robot called CuddleBunny. It will also be made of spring steel but will be low to the ground, have the wheels covered, be a rectangle, and HAVE A ******!! It is pretty much a mini version of our 120 lb robot. It is not finished yet, as I have not even stared making the frame for it. I have all the parts ordered and have out all drawn out tho. Hopefully I will be able to bring it to the Miami Youth Fair. Oh, and I'm sure you want to know why I chose CuddleBunny. Well, I am a nerd (as most robotics people are) and I play a good share of video games. When I play violent video games I like make my screenname something ferocious. The first time I did this, the most ferocious name I could come up with so that my enemies would all coward in fear was: CuddleBunny. So there you go.

Sean, didn't you enter it in a 120 lb rumble?

Emissary42 wrote:

Sean, didn't you enter it in a 120 lb rumble?

Yes I did. It was the little blue triangle that was the only one that had balls and actually hit the 120. But then it died because it bent the wedge in a way so that it raised my wheels above the ground.