Originally Posted by JVN (Post 1465440)

NEVER any fear here -- especially because I've never been accused of being energetic.

Originally Posted by Loose Screw (Post 1465266)

Safety is a very important aspect to always keep in mind, and each game has an aspect that is "dangerous". In 2013 someone at MSC took a frisbee straight to the face from looking into his robot's shooter.

2013 and 2014's games seemed questionable to me in regards to safety. Shooting hard frisbees the entire length of the field? Robots high on a flimsy pyramid? Throwing a giant ball at average head height? Those all came to mind, and unfortunately some people were injured.

When it comes to canburglars, the goal is to slam a small hook into the opening (or reach around the back), and drive forwards as fast as you can.

As an inspector, I'll be looking for ways to safely secure and disarm your canburglar. You don't want them to accidentally fire right onto a team member.

Another thing that's been a staple for robot design is to make sure none of your appendages have a pointy or sharp element to them, usually less than 1 square inch in area.

Finally, I would reccomend designing a "fail point" in your arms so if they do interlock with another team, they can safely break rather than exploding pieces into the crowd or other robots. Having a controlled failure is always better than an uncontolled burst of parts.

A piece of advise I would give to drive teams setting up is that if you know your robot and an opposing robot are going for cans, and there's a chance that you'll interlock, try to go for a different set. The earlier video on CD was a glimpse of what's to come for future can battles.

Originally Posted by Bennett548 (Post 1466785)

My guess is that can burglars will get about 20% faster by the end of the season

Originally Posted by Bennett548 (Post 1466785)

Seeing more safe canburglars at Bedford has eased my concern a little bit.

My guess is that can burglars will get about 20% faster by the end of the season, and I think this can be accomplished with little to no stored energy, making them much safer than the giant hair-trigger mousetraps I was worried about before.

Originally Posted by Siri (Post 1466827)

How fast the fastest canburglars get will be determined largely by how quickly they can release massive amounts of stored energy.

This is a dangerous challenge. The GDC designed it to be an incredibly dangerous challenge. (I ask myself again, why?) Teams that intend to go head-to-head on Einstein have exactly zero reason to stop at ~20% faster, and they certainly have no reason not to store energy. This is essentially an arms race; the public time to beat is already like 0.25s. Beyond that, it's mostly a hidden war, but I've inspected (and reffed next to) several stored energy grabbers thus far.

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1466837)

You have to grab them and get them off the step, or block the other grabber before the opponent can latch on. Once they latch on, it's a tug-of-war/ lockdown.

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1466837)

But at a certain point it's useless to go faster. You have to grab them and get them off the step, or block the other grabber before the opponent can latch on. Once they latch on, it's a tug-of-war/ lockdown.

Originally Posted by themccannman (Post 1466856)

This has been covered countless times already, all you have to do is get to the hole first. It's not hard to stop the other team once you're there.

Originally Posted by George Nishimura (Post 1466862)

Originally Posted by themccannman (Post 1466882)

Much smaller target to hit, it's inherently less reliable. Also see 971, it's easy to angle your hooks so that the cans get knocked off as soon as your hooks hit.

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1467067)

IIRC there were teams at SVR going for handle grabs (5076 or some team around there). We can do this ourselves with consistency, and at a speed considerably faster than anything I've seen so far (we didn't use this at SVR due to unforseen geometry issues). It's a little faster for the effort/power because there is no need to telescope (not to mention the weight is lower), but I will admit it's harder to line up than a center grab. Thanks for directing me to 971's grab, it looks interesting.
It remains to be seen what champs will look like.

Originally Posted by Bennett548 (Post 1467245)

Grabbing the can handles would be faster, but I feel that the gap you have to hit between the lid and the handle is probably smaller than the placement tolerance of the containers on the step.