2013 Robot Dimensions
 

With the new perimeter rules I was wondering what dimensions you used since they could be so flexible. Please also include your shape for a more informative answer. We went for the 28" x 28" square since we needed all the space we could get but did not have great machining access necessary for any shape other than a rectangle or a square.

Re: 2013 Robot Dimensions
 

we went with a 30 x 24 rectangular frame driving long and it worked fairly well

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27"X27" square

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27 x 27

30" x 25" rectangle, driven wide

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How big is that with bumpers? It seems like you wouldn't fit through a standard door. :ahh:

My team had a seven-sided V-like shape, whose dimensions I do not recall offhand; they are somewhat complex. It's on the left here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/at...5&d=1363182897

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Almost every robot last year was 38x28 and they could fit through doors fine. 28x28 is exactly the same in that regard.

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21"x34" widebot

Please, FIRST, give us a 132" (38x28) perimeter again! We couldn't do half of what we wanted to do this year because of size restrictions.

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27.75"x27.75" square (incidentally, also approximately a 27.75" cube, when collapsed). Pretty logical for us: maximized stable wheel base square for swerve. Other than ensuring it fit on the pyramid corner between levels (for the way we climb), there wasn't any more strategic incentive on the size/shape. We try to churn our chassis design out within days, so peculiar shapes are an investment we didn't have the need for this year. Never had a problem with doors.

Good question. I liked the rule's setup this year. Even the small number was very appropriately challenging from a design perspective.

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27x28... We wanted to leave a spare inch to make sure we wouldn't be over size. There were plenty of robots this year that were slightly over size, when they tried to build right to the limit. However, with a little filing on the corners, it was a lot easier to fix this year than in previous years!

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32x23.75 rectangle, driven wide. We did this primarily to get more width out of our floor pickup.

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I would say this is actually a good thing. Forcing teams to choose which parts of the challenge they'll address leads to more diverse robots and a more interesting game on the field. Looking back over the past few years, having so many robots available that could do everything really did make match ups a little less interesting than this year.

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I agree it led to a really diverse field of robot types that hasn't been seen recently, which was nice and really made this game one of the best from a strategists point of view. It would have been cool though to see some of the robots people could have made with the old size. Also perimeter should be the new measurement it lead to a lot of different looking robots, and also seemed to be a lot easier for inspectors to check.

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Actually, it was harder for inspectors to check, but easier for teams to pass! with the sizing box in previous years, inspectors had it easy - they got to stand back while teams tried to shove their robot into the box. This year, inspectors had to pull out the tape measure and work their way around the entire robot, making sure the tape wasn't going over a "minor protrusion" and was pulled tight. Much more work for the inspector :p

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27" x 27" with a 1" last-minute add-on to bring the shooter deck back inside the frame perimeter when open at the start of a match...

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We were configured long, 6 wheel tank, 32.5 x 23.75. The length was largely driven by the 31 inch nanotubes and wheels.

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Really? I love not having the sizing box to further bog down the inspection station. More difficult (and sllooow) to handle the box + scale flow than just the scale. Re-checking is also a lot easier. I kept my tape measure as a ref as well (ok, so I did that before). The individual measuring action might not be better for inspectors, but I'd say the process is easier.

Did people actually do the "walk all the way around" thing? I thought that was a original intent, but then we were told (both as an inspector and as a mentor), that we'd just measure each side and add. The walk around's more accurate though.

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At both of the regionals I did and at Champs, we wrapped the tape measure around the entire robot in order to determine compliance.

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We were 28W*26L. (No, it's not because I'm a Wave fanboy)

If I had to do it again, it would probably be 24W*30L

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Jeez, I hope they standardize this.


So keep the rule, regulate the procedure.

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I would guess this will be standardized (assuming the rule stays the same). One of the issues with radically changing a major rule like this is working out the kinks the first year... It's easy for the GDC to decide to change a rule (and frankly I love this rule change!), but once they do the inspectors have to "scramble" to figure out how to best enforce it - remember, we don't see the rules until everyone else does! That means we have 6 weeks as a widely spread out group to figure out how to enforce all the rules the same at all regionals (and keep in mind we have a bunch of bright LRI's who all have their own ideas on how things should be enforced), and sometimes word doesn't quite get to everyone regarding the process that's to be used, despite our best efforts.

In the end, though, I would personally be comfortable with either method as being "good enough". After all, what difference is a 1/4" going to make if you're a little over? It just mean's you're going to be spending some time and effort getting under (by filing the corners), without really changing your design. If we miss that 1/4" by measuring the sides and doing some math, I wouldn't really think that a team gets any sort of competitive advantage. I'd be more worried about inspectors confusing themselves trying to do the math under pressure while standing in front of a team!

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We would have liked to go with a 38:28 ratio, but couldn't. We had a shooter proto w/ hopper in week one that we liked that was 26 inches wide. So we made the robot 26.5 inches which left the length to 29.5 inches.

We built the bot to the full spec of 112" knowing we could keep a tolerance to .125 inch over the entire bot. Our plan was that if we came in to long on the perimeter to take a smidge off the corner bumper mounts.

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What Jon said. ^^

I like small 'bots, and I cannot lie. :cool:

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I don't agree. For the most part, it doesn't force prioritizing or diversity, it forces many teams to build the same robot. More complicated drivetrains (swerve/mecanum) are a bigger pain to pull off, and many hundreds of teams built the exact same robot- 4/6wd human-fed linear shooter. The biggest variation was whether the team build a linear or curved shooter, but other than that, differences in functionality are minimal. The only really cool design difference, the height of the robot with regards to full-court shooting (60") or making it under the bar (<30") was not based on size, it was based on the field.

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I believe they're refering to the decision of having a floor pickup vs having a climber. Or Having a 10pt hang vs a climber. Not differences in the same mechanism but the decision between different mechanisms in the same space.

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and with that, you've completely ignored 2 other viable design options this year: Blocking and climbing. There were a wide array of blocking designs, from ones that were removable to ones that could extend up to block a FCS. For climbing, there were again a wide variety of designs - even teams that climbed the same part of the pyramid (corner or side) had drastically different designs. Yes, there were really only two ways to shoot a frisbee - linear or curved. This wasn't because of the size constraint... it was because of the physics of actually shooting a frisbee. And yes, you see more shooters than anything else... but I think that's due to the (real or perceived) cost and benefits of tackling each part of the challenge. If climbing was as "easy" as shooting and perceived by everyone to be "worth" as much, we would have seen a lot more climbing robots.

The key point, however, is that with a smaller footprint it makes it very, very hard to build a robot that can do everything. As a result, teams have to prioritize and choose what they'll do.

From a strategy perspective, you end up with matches that play very differently based on what each robot is capable of doing. Who does the blocker try and stop, the shooting robot or the climbing robot? If you have 3 short robots, how do you stop the FCS you're going against? This goes directly against what we've seen the past few years. Last year, everyone mostly stayed on their side of the field, shot as many baskets as they could and balanced a bridge. The only question was how many robots would be on that bridge. The year before, you were split with two robots putting up tubes and one playing defense for most alliances, and everyone had an identical minibot to deploy by week 2. By forcing the "elite" teams to make choices in their design, we create a much better competition overall.

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There's something to be said for the measurement of 112". It's a 28x28 cube. It means any four-sided robot, regardless of how it is built, WILL fit through a standard door. Changing it to 132" would allow the possibility for errors.

Personally, I didn't mind smaller robots. Packaging wasn't easy, but it wasn't the reason we made any of our big design decisions really. The way robots move across the field when they are smaller was also better, less traffic and more scoring in general.

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1503 :P

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I had somehow missed that robot! that's a pretty cool (and very different!) way of shooting!

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525. :]