Launching Boxes
 

I was first reluctant to post this, but one of the ideas i have had for a robot is one that launches boxes back to my teams scoring zone. At first, many team members liked the idea, now, they are not liking it as much. They fear a few things.
1. That it may violate the rule stating that any danger of harming the environment, other robots, or the boxes may get you disqualified
2. They feal that it would be hard to be able to launch the boxes as far as needed to do this.
I personally think that this strategy of "launching" boxes is the best strategy possible, and that the rules don't prohibit it, but they feal differently
So, i have 2 questions
1. Would launching boxes in such a way violate any rules
2. How heavy are the boxes?
Please help :D

Re: Launching Boxes
 

1. No becasue in the rules they say that it is allowable to launch the boxes

2. 5.10lbs.

yeh, but...
 

it never specifies however how far they intend these things to be launched. The judge may feal that us launching them really far, at high velocities may be dangerous, and they may disqualify us.
It is hard to tell, thank you for your reply though

yes it seems many teams secret plan was to throw boxes though I believe our team is working on something much more diabolical muahahahhahaa

I think just as long as the refs don't feel that the robot (player) is intentionally trying to fire the boxes at other robots to damage them (or at the crowd, etc.), you'll be fine. Even if some refs feel unsafe with the catapulting, you can always do other things with the robot instead of launching the boxes. However, I don't think you can fire anything else besides boxes.

i thought we can only use the tubing to launch the boxes

There's also the chance the crashing boxes will break, and I don't think broken boxes help you to build stacks or count towards your score. I'm not so sure about the latter, though.

The boxes won't break too easily if all they're doing is flying through the air. And if you're in the opponent's zone, all you really need to do is be able to launch it to maybe the middle of the opposite ramp to get it to your side. Any further and they'd probably bounce to the gray zone!

I really want to make a launching robot this year, and a few parts about it that I like that haven't been mentioned...
You could chill in your zone defending your tall stack, and right near the end of the match you could launch one into your oponent"s stack and knock it over (you can defend a stack on the ground, but not in the air)
If you placed your human boxes correctly you could have your robot pick it up and knock down the wall with it before the other robots had even reached the ramp.
You could launch them at the opposing alliances drivers (not G.P., but it"s probably rather hard to compete when crates keep crashing into the plexiglass in front of you)

And an impossible little fantasy that would never happy but would be really cool: If you could stay in your opponent"s scoring zone and launch their crates onto the crates in your zone (making stacks from 20 feet away.)

Re: Re: Launching Boxes
 

The boxes will sometimes break if you launch them, but FIRST may attribute that to wear and tear. I would ask them this question for a definite answer.

our team was thing about launching boxes but we came to he determination that it is tooo much time wasted on one point.

Trust me, when you start practicing this, coming up with prototypes, etc. be VERY careful with that tubing. Like, make sure it is held on to VERY tightly. Trust me. Seriously.

*holding ice to forehead*

you finally got some ice? does it really help 6 hours later :D

Will using a pneumatic or a motor attached to a lever arm give enough speed and power to launch a box?

As far as launching goes, our team saw a lot of possibilities with this one,

Consider:

Launching the box from the enemy zone to yours
Launching a box to knock down an enemy stack
Launching a box to knock down the middle pillars


Pneumatic pistons might be a good bet for a launcher, the large bore cylinders have a lot of "umph" (which is based on stroke size as well as bore radius)