2019 – Fifty Cent

Everyone thinks we named Fifty cent after the famous rapper.  Nope.  We had a lot of problems with our initial designs.  Fifty was designed to lift balls high into the Rocket Ship and Cargo Ship for the Game DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE.  We entered a Week 1 competition and were still working on our elevator system in the pits at the competition.  We critically needed some fender washers as we rethought the mounting of some key parts.  We didn't have any packed, and no other teams seemed to have any we could borrow.  So we improvised by using two quarters.  It worked like a charm, and almost immediately someone asked if the robot had a name yet.  Fifty Cent was born.  After we replaced the quarters with some actually appropriate fender washers, we decided to keep the quarters, they are now mounted on the side of the elevator system to remind us of where he started.  Fifty saw us through into playoffs at that first competition, was steadily improved into our second competition, and then two more off season comps that year.  By the time we had a few more under our belt, we had improved his overall design significantly and we could fully load a cargo ship by ourselves for that Deep Space.