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Canburglar Safety
As noted by Frank in his recent blog entry canburglars have the potential to be dangerous. We need to make sure to reduce or eliminate the danger of these devices.
We insert a steel pin into the linkage that drives our burglars when the robot is on the cart, and the pins are tied to the cart so they can't be forgotten before a match. We also unplug the motors when we know we won't be using them for a while, in case somebody forgets to put in the pins. What is your team doing to make your canburglars safer? Has anyone had an inspector bring up a canburglar safety issue yet? |
Re: Canburglar Safety
I'd like to address the elephant in the room...
Many teams are now competing quietly, in the background, to build the world's fastest canburglar. We all know that the guy next of us is trying to go faster. So we go faster. We know that he knows that we know he's trying to go faster... so we go even faster. We know that he also knows this... We all know the solution at a certain point comes down to energy. How much energy? More. More, and more, and more. Are these high energy, super fast canburglars safe? Depends who you ask. Safe is not quantifiable. Safe is not defined in the manual. Safe is relative. However... safe is required for legality. Quote:
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Who will determine which canburglars are safe? How will this standard of safety be fairly and equally applied across all canburglars? Will the World Championship be determined by an inspector's subjective decision that 118's canburglar is safe, but 254's isn't? -John |
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The only concern is to keep phones, computers, and buttons away from the magnets! My driver button was attracted to them, pulling my shirt with it, from around five inches away and I was convinced I'd gotten myself hooked on something until I looked more closely. |
Re: Canburglar Safety
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. |
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Thank you for proving my point. Are you the person in charge of judging whether canburglars are legal in STL this year? Are we using the "Loose Screw" standard of canburglar safety? Or is there a different standard? |
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I like the single hook grabbers the best because they can be built with easy failure points. That and there's less to get tangled with compared to a bar-behind-RC grabber. |
Re: Canburglar Safety
I'd say that 99.9% of launchers last year were more dangerous in terms of serious injury than most can grabbers we will see at champs this year.
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I've never inspected or reffed, so I don't feel comfortable categorically saying you should have a latch of some sort, but it's just seems like good safety sense to include one if your mechanism is using that much energy. |
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EDIT: A little research on the University of Illinois website appears to show that the strength of two magnets acting upon each other will fall off proportionally with the distance to the fourth power (read the second answer given). https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=419 The reason the pin was attracted from a greater distance is because it's quite light. I would agree with previous posters that robots from other years carried greater risks in terms of danger. My team's robot from 2014 used four linear composite springs with 80 pounds of force each to propel the ball, and our 2013 robot climbed all the way to the third level of the tower. Both of those represent much greater potential for bodily harm than two properly managed magnets on our canburglar device to prevent it from breaking loose. |
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On the software side of things, if we wanted the driver to control the canburglars we would have them press two buttons simultaneously to raise and lower them. This is so they can't accidentally bump the button and have them triggered. It's a bit safer than just one button, especially on the practice field when lots of people are around. Also before we enable we make sure we are in the right mode and people are clear of the mechanism.
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I don't think that's a good solution. |
Re: Canburglar Safety
I think we are in a Canburglar Cold War right now. We know the other side is working on making nuclear weapons, so we have to make more nukes, and come up with better ways to deliver them.
The current trends in speeds make me think that pneumatics and motors will soon be, or are already, not going to be fast enough to win the Canburglar war. Stored energy in the form of springs is naturally the next thing to turn to. Unfortunately, I believe that these spring loaded designs are going to lead to much more dangerous situations. Another thing that the cold war analogy brought up to me was the idea that cheesecaking=nuclear proliferation. If you are a third alliance member, you may have to choose if you want to put a potentially dangerous device on your robot. I have already decided on the level of energy that I am comfortable with: if we miss the hole and our hook punches through the trash can lid, we have too much energy and have to dial it back a bit. |
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