How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

In Lunacy, the robot must not expand past the size limits nor break the Bumper Perimeter this year. If both of these rules were done away with, what designs would you see this year that we didn't?

Keep in mind no de scoring!

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

I think we would see a lot of designs like that of Team 148, but with a wider dumper in the front. 148 had a perfect design for doing what they wanted to do. Their system was flawless, and their bot could hold enough moon rocks to fill an entire trailer. If they had managed to have a bit wider bot, they could have made an elevator capable of dumping multiple balls at a time, which would have allowed for faster dumping, which I think was the only down-side to their design, and many similar designs as well. The more balls you carry, the longer it takes to get rid of them, and to pick them up, if you're doing so one by one.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

I am not sure if this idea breaks another rule, but thought of the idea of latching on to another robots trailer. This way, the trailer is in front of you at all times. It seems kind of mean to latch on to another trailer, which could mess them up with their driving, but it would be really effective.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

That's an easy one... Put a cover over the trailer. Wouldn't be very interesting of a game though, unless other robots tried to take the cover off and score...

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Along with the other modifications, a system to extend a ball pickup system so a robot could reach out to grab balls from around the robot. Then you don't have to allign perfectly with the balls.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

You would see lots of robots with expanding hoppers, or imitations of RAGE from 2002.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Another idea would be to place two semi circles on the left and right side of the shooting mechanism. That way, missed moon rocks can be recycled back into the shooting mechanism.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

339 can easily answer that question, since we spent our first 4-5 hours of strategy discussion after Kickoff without understanding that we had to stay within the bumper perimeter.

Things we would have done:
-Cover over the trailer
-Two rotating scoopers to direct moon rocks into pickup area
-Deployable chute to direct balls into opponent's trailer

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

I wouldn't. It would be too dangerous to reach out, even if you were aloud. That is why the rules were in place, so we wouldn't end up with a bunch of broken bots. That rule wasn't there to constrain, it was there to protect. One of the better rules for this year, if you ask me.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

A trebuchet scoring device

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

GAAA 20-20 Hindsight!:eek:

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

The rules did not really limit the ability to create a wider dumper (we did it), and 148 could have built one within the current rules if they wanted to. I would suspect that they did not due to possible issues with funneling at the top while directing the balls into the top of the helix.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Initially I really disliked the fact that we couldn't leave dimensions, but looking back, its definitely an important thing to be able to design to. Something we decided at the end of last season was that we would try to keep our robots from extending past the drive base as much as possible. This really cuts down on damages. In the end I don't think I would change anything. This does not apply to all years, but I think that this year, not being able to leave dimensions was really not that much of a problem.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Easy, have a basket just about the maximum starting config, Place a hinge on the upper forward edge along with a CIM, And have a dumper.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

More lucky Clamps! We had this one lucky racing clamp on our robot for the New Jersey and VCU regional, but it seems it ran out when we got to Atlanta.

Honestly I wouldn't change anything about the 612 robot, just strategy. I wish we started human loading more before Saturday in Atlanta. Also I wish we wrote a Automode to human load rather than trying to fix our tracking Auto which broke after New Jersey, we tried in our last match but the turning value was off by a half a second but we were just guessing numbers before we did it.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

After watching some of the really good dumpers I'm not sure relaxing the rules would result in robots that worked any better.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Did that :D

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/32412

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

oh my god...
roffle

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

It was origionally built to launch baseballs. More info about it here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/32122

There’s a link to a video somewhere in the thread. It’s scary.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

I personally agree, I've just heard a lot of talk about the "expand to any size" rule's omission stifling creativity and whatnot, so it'd be cool to see all the interesting designs.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

We might have added some "wings" to pop out at the sides of the front to help collect balls, to funnel them into the harvester from a wider area. I can't really think of anything else.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

We had discussed going with a near replica of Spikes robot from 2006 and then we realized we couldn't expand anyway and we'd probably score on ourselves:ahh:

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

You would definitely have seen people covering the trailers, which would have killed the game. If, however, we assume they only allow you to expand forward and to the side (I.E. no expanding backwards over your own trailer) you probably would have seen very similar designs but that incorporated deployable chutes to extend directly over the opponents trailer and deployable arms to better collect balls. I don't see why anyone would be worried about breaking things. We've never had big issues with it, once we designed properly.

Re: How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?
 

Assuming covering trailers and interlocking between bars (think 2002) was still illegal.

"Arms" (for lack of a better word) to help contain opposing trailers.
An expandable hopper intentionally designed to collect balls that "overshot" our trailer.