Yup! I totally didn't meant to convice FIRST to use this test this year. I really think that if we can help FIRST establish different grounds of different rulings, such as entanglement and damaging the carpet, FIRST will have a much easier time in the future when dealing with clarification of rules.

If we put enough thoughts in this, and get this traction tester working really well (which I think team 180 already did that), then there should be a good chance for FIRST to do this in future competition. Should be easy to implement and useful for inspections. It's pretty much a sure way to tell if robots are going to damage the carpet. Any other damages that's going to occur during matches, I am pretty sure they are not likely to happen.



And, I don't think FIRST "like" to change rules to mess up teams... There must be some sort of reason why they HAVE to change it... Even though I don't agree with some of the changes in ruling, I don't think we should be too harsh and keep telling FIRST what they are doing is wrong...

Save these up, talk to other teams to establish some general issues we want to talk to FIRST about, and if we get enough people to agree with us, FIRST will do the changes. This is what's great about FIRST. Over the years FIRST have improved so much because how much they listen to teams about these sort of things.

Traction Testing Stuckee
 

I guess I'm the one who will end up manning the traction test in the pit since James will be on stage most of the time. A couple things for teams to remember:

(1) Traction and Pulling/Pushing power are not the same. If you have plenty of traction but aren't geared right or don't have enough motor power behind you, your treads won't slip but your motors will stall and backdrive in a pushing contest, causing them to burn up or fuses and breakers to blow and lots of other unpleasent problems.

(2) Traction without power can be a good thing - if you can apply a brake and cause the other guy's motors to stall and burn up.

Sounds like we have plenty of interest - We'll try to put together a test set-up that is as quantifiable as possible for both traction and pulling/pushing power.

BTW - I ran some quick calcs relative to breaking a 1000# rated cable (see another thread) - you could certainly generate more than enough impact load - it's a function of stiffness and velocity, not power or traction so that's not really a good metric.

hey i think that the traction test would be a great idea. I dont think our team really knows really how much traction we have. Also if you did the test on the practice day then if some teams wanted to try to improve their own traction they would have a little time. if you need any help making stickers or whatever just let me know. im on team 234.

jessi amt

This sounds like fun
 

Count team 45 in for a traction test... we might do pretty well. :)

We would especially be interested in a loaded test, since we transfer the weight of a goal to our robot.

Andy B.