field blocking?

[ewankoff]

can you block off and trap part of the field. we thought of extending a few arms and trapping the opponents. is it legal?

[trev2023]

as far as I've seen, it's legal. You may not pin any other robot against a field object for more than 10 seconds, but blocking them is not a problem. your biggest problems with this idea is that you must take into account that they will try to get out of (ram) your arms, so your arms would have to be super strong.

[Adam Richards]

as far as I've seen, it's legal. You may not pin any other robot against a field object for more than 10 seconds, but blocking them is not a problem. your biggest problems with this idea is that you must take into account that they will try to get out of (ram) your arms, so your arms would have to be super strong.
Well, the rule of thumb is: if a robot can move, even an inch, it's not "pinned". Your arms don't really have to be completely strong, I mean, it really can come down to how they're connected to your robot. You don't want it snapping off of the robot and destroying whatever connection you have to the chassis.

[Lisa Perez]

Also, you can't grab onto the rails on the perimeters of the field.

[Wayne C.]

ask team 365 the Miracle Workers about making a robot with huge arms (remember 2002). I think they will tell you that they will take a beating and you can't reallly do much to block some robots.

WC

[DrShadowSML]

From my experience, the longer the arm, the worse. If the arm is going to be 9 feet long for example, it will take longer to move to a desired position than say a 5 foot arm. :]

[Jasmin]

We were actually thinking of something like that, but came across a few problems while discussing the possibility last night.

Your robot would have to move pretty fast and be able to extend the arms like lightning. There will be others who move directly out of their end to possibly the other side in autonomous mode, so you'd have to beat them to it, which isn't always a guarantee.

It's legal, but not very high on the rating skill of sportsmanship, I think. But just think about it: Your team may be disliked by some, but then everyone will want you on their team at the end if it actually works out.

Good luck!

[Jay5780]

can you block off and trap part of the field. we thought of extending a few arms and trapping the opponents. is it legal?

I thought I saw something in regards to this in either the manual or on the Q&A Sysyem, but I could not find it and don't remember what they said.

I would say yea you could, because you can block you opponent from the goals, you just can not pin them and / or latch onto or damage any part of the field. Be prepared to have you opponent do anything in there power to move you or get by you, since you are impeading them I believe they are allowed to do almost anything to get by (though it would be a waste of time).

And think about gracious professionalism in terms of the "monopoly" you would have on the field. (Makes me think of Bill Gates...)

[Wetzel]

Well, the rule of thumb is: if a robot can move, even an inch, it's not "pinned".

That is incorrect. The offical rule is as follows.

A ROBOT cannot pin (inhibit the movement of another ROBOT while in contact with one or more field elements) for more than 10 seconds. If a ROBOT has been pinned for 10 seconds, the team with the pinning ROBOT will be told by the referee to release the pinned ROBOT and back away approximately 3 feet. Once the pinning ROBOT has backed off by 3 feet, it may again attempt to pin its opponent and, if successful, the 10 second count starts over. If a referee determines this rule to be violated, a 10-point penalty flag will be thrown for each violation.


Wetzel

[FusionDude364]

I'm missing as to what the point would be. In the time it would take to develop arms or appendages like that a team could make really awesome tetra manipulating arms or something else that would produce guaranteed results.

[sciencenerd]

This would be extremely hard to implement IMHO. Not only would your arm have to be super strong to keep from breaking off your robot, but think about how much leverage the other robot would have on your arm. If they backed off and rammed i, your entire robot would probably spin in a circle, letting them through. You would have to anchor somehow, and I can't think of a legal way to do that at the moment, although perhaps there is one.

[JulieB]

sound a stack attack type game of blocking to me

[663.keith]

Although that a gigantic blocking robot would technically be legal, I just doesn't seem like it would be very GP to me. I can imagine blocking one robot, but not allowing three or so just seems rude.

I also agree with the fact that the arms would have to be super strong!

[sanddrag]

What I'm looking at is not the strenght of the arms, or the place that they are mounted but the torque applied to the whole robot when another robot pushes on the end of the arm. It will just spin the robot right around because there is a lot of leverage.

EDIT: The case I described would be where the robot is not interacting with the field other than by it's tractive devices (wheels, tracks, etc.)