I don't think it was ever said that the robots from 2000 were better robots than the ones from 2001. What was said was that 2000 (and earlier) required more robust robots. To use your analogy, is it easier to design a Boeing 747 or an F-16? The F-16 is much harder because it has to go through rougher conditions. Basically, as far as robustness goes, the F-16 has to be able to withstand everything the 747 can and then even more (combat conditions). The connection made was that 2v2 required more robust robots which are harder to design and which therefore makes the competition harder. There was also the conjecture that a harder competition is a better competition.

Matt

To Bash or not to Bash, That is the question
 

As the only professional engineer to respond to this thread thus far I feel obligated to make a few comments.

First the 747 vs F16 analogy is a good one. They are designed for different tasks and more importantly different loadings with different safety factors.

But I wouldn't say that the F-16 was harder to design than the 747. In fact I believe the structural design team for the 747 was much larger than the F-16's. This is because FAA flight certification for commercial service is a very complicated process and involves many more factors than the Air Force's. Which is not to say that the Air Force's is easy. It's just that for commercial service you have so much more to prove.

Also aeroelastic effects (changes in aerodynamic performance due to changes in the structure, like wings bending under load) are much more important for the 747, those long flapping wings don't you know. ( Don't think they flap? try watching one in flight, particularly in turbulence)

The F-16 with it's short stubby wings doesn't get much of that. Though the loadings are higher, there are fewer numbers to deal with and fewer conflicting requirements.

Re: To Bash or not to Bash, That is the question
 

The wings of a 747 don't bend under load. F-16s do (the AIM-120Cs...the Mavericks...the Sidewinders), but yet they are stiff because of their relative shortness compared to those of a 747.

What you don't see is the 747 going through 12 g's of acceleration (which would lead to black out if people aren't trained).

That doesn't mean its harder to design. It just means that the 747's wings don't flap under load...they just flap. :D

I may have opened a can of worms... who's wings flap more really isn't importent here.

It's just that you have to think about what is important to the bots we make. In past years, having a hardy bot that could take broadsides was nessecary, that was part of the game.

This year, thats just not important. Thus we spend more time and resources on adding more functions and more flexiblity. Being robust just wasn't important, it was a none issue. Why waste the resources on covering our chains when we don't need to? If we had added that extra strength, we would have had to give up some function, we bearly made 130 as it was. In the end, all the bots are just as enginered as any other years bots, they can just do diffrent things.

The game has just as much to it as anyother game FIRST has put out. When you give up defense playing, you gain in other areas.

So thats why I'm a little reluctent to play a 2 vs 2 game. It just seems to me that you can only change the game so much before its not the same game anymore. Bassicly, we might be putting our 747 into ww3 and expecting it to win. Not to say it won't, we may just throw a couple hundred chains before we do.

-Andy

Matt,

Actually a 747's wings deflect several feet on takeoff. They continue to deflect more or less throughout a flight. Just sit near the wing and look out the window of any commercial jet and you will see the wings "flap" up and down. This deflection is enough to noticably affect the aerodynamic performance of the wing. Hence the development of the discipline of aeroelastics.

While an F-16s wings do flex it is not nearly the percentage of span that you see in any commecial liner.

But all this is beside the point I was trying to make. What I was trying to say was that the severity of the load is not a good indicator of the difficulty of the design. Once a good model is built sizing for a 120g load is no more difficult than sizing for a 1.2g load. The hard part is building the model correctly and asking for the right information from it.

Having worked both commercial and military programs, though admittedly not as a structural analyst, my observation has been that the loadings of commercial structures are more complex and they seem to have more load cases to deal with. This means that there are more things to consider in designing a commercial structure than a military one. Thus the design process for a commercial aircraft can be more complex and go through more iterations than a military one to get the "best" answer.

How do I know about all these iterations? because every time the structures guys and gals make a change I have to see how it will impact my tool designs for making the part they are designing.
So while I am not an analyst I do find myself in an awful lot of meetings where structural problems are being worked on and I need to be fairly fluent in what they are talking about.

Just as a point of reference the one of the most complex design solutions I have seen in the past several years was an aircraft that is 6" long and weighs 2.7oz. The wings flex for passive gust alleviation so it can fly in windy conditions. Without the passive alleviation it would be too much for the pilot to compensate for and the bird would be unflyable in all but calm conditions. Actually early models had just that problem.

I could go on but I'm typing too much like an engineer and am probably way over most of your heads. If you have any questions about what I mean with any of this I'll be happy to try and explain. After all I do it all the time with my team anyway.

Given that an F-16 and a 747 aren't particularly analogous, I was wondering how the structural design of a 747 versus, say, a C-5 is? Both planes in that case have the same role (hauling stuff -- apply it to the 747 cargo variety if you like) and are nearly the same size (that assumes I have my military designations rights). Basically the C-5 should have to deal with everything the 747 does but also deal with combat conditions.

Matt who would've prefered to compare the F-16 to a civilian fighter jet.... ;)

Matt,

To answer your question I refer to a quote from the Prof of my Aeronuatical Design class whose name is long forgotten. "The C-5A is a 747 with limited off-road capability"

Apparently the 747 was originally designed for the competition that the C5 eventually won. The "bump" on top was to allow vehicles to be rolled through clamshell doors in the nose and still have the pilots be able to see where they were going. When they lost the Boeing executives decided to "commercialize" their concept. At least that's the story I heard from my Prof. Since he was a part timer and his "real" job was in conceptual design for what was then McDonell Douglas AND he claimed that he was on the C5 proposal team I assume he knew what he was talking about.

BTW the "limited off-road capability" comes from the C5's reputed ability to land on a dirt strip. According to Prof you could only take off from such a strip once. After that the engines would be chewed up so badly by sand etc that they would have to be replaced.

Neither aircraft is designed for air to air combat. Both are designed to withstand many years (decades?) of hard use. It's just that on certain rare occasions the use on a C5 will be harder than that on a 747. The "commercialized" 747 of course has downrated landing gear as commercial aircraft of that sort are rarely required to use dirt fields. Both were designed before the current requirement that combat aircraft be able to take a 50 cal HEI round in the wing and survive, so I doubt that either could. In either case a Stinger in the right place could bring one down.:mad: