Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

One of these. Check the PODS. They might be stored there. There was no room on the truck heading back to FIRST.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

We should have a defense that's just a bunch of boulders glued together. I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

Revolving door?

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

The bumps from Breakaway

New Off-season Defenses
 

Yes. That thing looks absolutely terrifying. Naturally, I'd love to see some of this year's robots go over it.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

Actually... That sounds like it could be lots of fun - It fits the same general idea of "crossing defenses" as well as being somewhat easy to replicate.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

My favorite idea is some variant of the cheval de frise. Most teams that can cross the portcullis can cross the cheval de frise, and, if not, they probably never got the portcullis picked against them anyway.

I'm tempted to say that we should just not have a portcullis, seeing as how it was rarely picked at champs. The only time I can remember seeing a portcullis was Einstien QF3M3, but that only happened because both alliances forgot to put in defense selections. (in our defense, Einstein is weird, and the timing is different from other fields)

Anyway, a defense that's like cheval but backwards, or all the quarters are attached together so that they move in unison seems like the best solution to me. Keep in mind that, if any new defenses are added, teams will not be able to test/write autonomous routines for them, so it's really only fair if it's basically identical to a portcullis, or a cheval.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

In theory, if a team had a sponsor capable of making high precision metal parts, a bunch of spare polycarb, and the springs, they could offer to build a competition spec portcullis if it won't be present at an event.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

A cheval de frise that is connected together and moves in unison probably would work best. It could be angled down towards the courtyard so you have to use a cheval routine to cross from the neutral zone to the courtyard, but crossing the other way doesn't require any extra work.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

The organizers of the 2016 STEMley Cup Championship are considering several modifications to the Stronghold game including freezing of the moats and this one:

"5. The evolution of the BOULDER... the CANNONBALL: one red and one blue CANNONBALL (ie. coloured BOULDER) start the match behind their respective alliance walls and may be introduced to the field by the HUMAN PLAYER only in the last twenty seconds of the MATCH. CANNONBALLS, being more destructive than ye BOULDERS of olde, are worth double the value of a regular gray BOULDER when scored in a tower GOAL (ie. ten points in the HIGH GOAL and two TOWER STRENGTH POINTS, four points in the LOW GOAL and two TOWER STRENGTH POINTS)."

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

I like the cannonball idea! By "freezing of the moats", does that mean filling them with ice, leaving them in place, or something else?

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

I'm not trying to single you out, but I wish people wouldn't have this sort of calloused attitude towards safety. I'm certain the people that broke fingers or required stitches from volunteering have a different point of view.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

When a volunteer signs up for field reset I believe they should have expected some level of danger. When I did feild reset this year I defiantly got some cuts on my hands and such (as I expected to), but I didn't complain saying that the rough terrain should be forbidden because I got hurt on it. I put my hand where I shouldn't have and after that I didn't do it again.

I don't disagree that breaking fingers and getting stiches is a little different, however by signing up to volenteer you know what the job is and the dangers it could potentially bring. You know what your getting yourself into.

My solution to this problem would have been after the first time there was a "severe" inquiry would have been to give volunteers an option to not work with the portcullis. Better training for handling it would have helped too. Obviously it's a little late for that now.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

Personnel safety MUST be the highest priority in the design of any mechanism which has the potential to be in contact with a person.

"Nothing we do is worth getting hurt." The most successful companies which I have dealt with in my career strive to operate with ZERO safety incidents. The best record even minor injuries and operate to drive those to Zero as well.

Safety must be a core value of every engineer; should be a core value of everybody.

Re: New Off-season Defenses
 

For one thing, comparing multiple people seriously and permanently injuring their fingers and hands (broken bones, etc) to being cut by a sharp edge is just callous. You didn't complain, because you weren't seriously injured. If you were, especially by something you didn't perceive to have such serious risk, you wouldn't be making armchair calls on the internet about how other volunteers should just suck it up.

The ways the portcullis injured people were not always intuitively obvious, and were very easy for someone to do to themselves. From what I understand, the assembly tends to fall apart when not installed in a base (via twisting or whatnot), and trying to catch the falling heavy door leaves your fingers very vulnerable to being pinched. The CF springs at the top of the door also have lots of stored energy and sharp edges.

After week 3 or 4 this year, your common-sense idea of keeping volunteers away from the portcullis was implemented at some events - only FTAs were allowed to assemble it I believe. It was known to be dangerous since then, and was kept in the competition to be fair to the competitors and to avoid mid season rule changes.