King Of The Hill And Others....
 

i have a few questions.
how many teams at your regional ruled the top of the ramp?
how many robots were flipped by one or two specific robot(s)?

We ruled the top of the ramp every time, and we flipped around 5-6 robots too!!

Re: King Of The Hill And Others....
 

Flipping another robot is not that difficult if they have a high CG. It's not a very nice thing to do, and I wouldn't be bragging about it. This isn't Battle Bots.

we got flipped once...then we got righted and still won the match.

Flipping other robots is not good.

At STL Regional I made sure to tell our driver to not tip any robots over, especially robots that were struggling to begin with.

Our robot could easily rule the top of the hill but had to be cautious of tipping ourselves over. It only happened twice in competition where we tipped. Once on the HDPE we would have no problem making sure any other robots became king.

We where at the Buckeye regional and I did not get to watch alot of matches because I'm a driver but I definitly know that we where a king of the hill robot. We finished all seven of our seeding matches on top of the ramp. We pushed robots that where in our way out of the way, and when we got pushed we held our own on top. So we where a KING of the hill.

GO CHIEFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At St.Louis, although there were "true" KOH bots, I didn't see one time where one sucesfully held the ramp.

St.Louis was a tip fest. Almost every match had a robot that flipped over, it was crazy.

There was only one true KOTH robot at Sacramento, team 114. They pretty much held the ramp against anyone else, which was the main reason we picked them as our partners. 254 was kind of a KOTH bot, but mainly had the intent of keeping themselves on, and not others off.

Cory

once we got to the hill, we were fairly good at keeping it, we kept 401 off. We also were very top-heavy, and flipped twice in the qualifying matches, oops! But watch out at philly, we will be better, just you wait!

TIPPING
 

Tipping robots is not wrong!!

Saying that would be just like saying that ramming them would be wrong. If you desgined a bot with a high CG, you will probably have an advantage due to the machanism that gave it this high CG. If you have a l9w CG, you can make up for the lack of a mechanism by punishing those who do.

You will probably all disagree, but this is just my opinion on ethics.

-Tenfour

Still Strong
 

Team 157 took a few tumbles in manchester but everytime we got fliped we self righted ourselves and dominated the top. One time our robot did a full summersault!!!! ya i'm talking 360 degrees backwards and the only thing we broke was a zip-tie.:ahh:

I do believe tipping is not gracious professionalism if done intentional and in my opinion any bot that has a specific design to flip another robot is really wrong and should not pass inspection.

re 122
 

yes... indeed 122 did keep our robot (401) off the top of the ramp... but we also broke their suction cup in the process. (sorry) We too will be better at nationals! we are doing quite a bit of changing.:yikes:

Tipping? Oh, sorry 'bout that!
 

As one of the students on our team said recently,"There should be a Tumble Weed Award". So many 'Bots got tipped that they looked like Tumble Weeds on the prarie!! It is unfortunate that a 'Bot with a high CG is so easy to tip this year, however, the nature of going up an incline at a higher rate of speed with another machine coming at it nearly as fast, something is bound to start rolling in the wind besides bins. I do not think it is the spirit of most teams to go out and knock over everyone in sight. FIRST designed a rough game, on a ramp... teams should have planned accordingly.

During one of our qualifying matches at the Buckeye, 292 got tipped. We cleared stacks in the opponents zone, went across and righted them. 292 was on the top of the ramp at the end, we were stuck on the bottom after our trans spit out chunks. It is not our intention to flip folks. But we do have a low CG, and a powerful arm which we use successfully to block and knock. We wish to remain good sports though and encourage others to do the same. :)

Basically, I think it depends on your intentions.
If you're flipping a bot simply to render it helpless and you know it can't self right itself, then yes, that's wrong.
If you're flipping a bot that you're pretty sure can self right itself, than that's not as bad.
Personally, I see no reason why you would want to flip a bot when you can pin it anyway. True, that if you pin, your bot is dedicated to that task, and if you flip, you can continue on your merry way, but I still think that if your strategy involves holding off the other team, pinning is an easier and wiser option.

Re: re 122
 

Don't worry about it, our suction cup actually broke when it was dragged against the carpet in our faulty autonomous mode. When we were on the ramp, it never actually sucked on because it had been broken. But you guys definately made a good showing, and I don't doubt you'll be better by nats!!

And btw ... look for me at your pits at nats ... I'll be a hokie next year!! :)

Stephen