Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

Let's say my robot can sit on the ramp and juggle balls that go up high enough in front of the center goal, and use that as an mechanism to block opposing shooters, is that legal? it doens't seem to violate the height rule.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

WOW I was thinking of the exact same thing!!! Nope,not against any rules i see, I believe they will let you do this

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

problem is, there is a high chance of the opposing force knocking both balls in.. HHAHHA :) :]

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

but if your juggling mechanism gives the ball alot of kinetic energy, you could knock their ball up wards, and then both balls falls back into your hopper. blocking and harvest their balls at same time :O. It's all about how you design it :P

here's a terrible drawing i made in 2 minutes in paint :O. I love crazy little ideas. haha



if i had a juggling robot i'd name it Clownbot :P

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

Block it with wind power :p

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

Wind power is legal, as long as it is made using allowed parts. I belive that using the balls as defense however is illegal."Game peices are meant to be just that and are not to be used as weapons"

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

The balls would not be used as "weapons". There is nothing in the rules stating that you cannot do this. The only verbiage about blocking balls is related to the height of the robot.

as for it being a viable strategy...I'd rather save whatever balls I collected for my offensive period, and push a potential shooter off course.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

I'm sure it will be tried and the potential for raise the roof entertainment value is quite high if it connects but mostly it'll just get balls all over the place so it's probably really not worth trying.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

Search the Q&A - the answer is there. You may use balls to block shots; you may NOT use balls as offensive weapons against other robots or against humans.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

cool, I'll get right to work on a Ball Anti-Ball Interception Ballistic Missile Control System.... :p

Shouldn't be too hard, we do have 25 days left in the build season right now....hmmmm.... :confused:

===

We thought of using a fan to direct a stream of air in front of the high goal for deflecting shots from the opposing alliance.....but the air-stream would need to be very strong, and it could be a battery killer.

--Mike

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

If you look through the post on FIRST Q&A you will notice that Human Players can use there balls to block shots. However nothing was mentioned about if your robot could do it.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

No, no, fight the urge to answer ... :D

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

I think the idea of having a robot with a large industrial fan on top, powered by two mini-bikes interesting... I wonder how many teams will try this...

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

The concept of an SDI was quickly brought up. If you could track a flying balls with the camera, compute it's flight and fire a ball so that the two would intercept before the goal it would be a legal defense.

The feasibilty of it...

Still, it would be extreamly sweet if you could have some little AA turret on your bot blowing balls out of the air with your own balls. Perhaps they should add some retroreflective tape to every other ball so they can act as tracer rounds ;).

-Andy A.

Re: Blocking balls with balls allowed?
 

Just remember the Patriot missle didn't work so well when it went into initial service and required a major software upgrade to fix it's timing/tacking problem. Do you think you can do it in 6 weeks?