Minibot - partnerships
 

Hello everyone of the Chief Delphi forums,

I am working as the student leader of robot design and it is my second year in doing so. Regarding the 2011 competition, would it be reasonable to produce 2-3 minibots (for the main bot and alliance of course), in the hopes that a partner alliance would have a minibot bay esque setup.

(If thats confusing im sure i can reword it in another post as needed )

Re: Minibot - partnerships
 

It is only reasonable to build them if your team has the manpower. If you do, then only two are necessary, as you are limited to two alliance towers. However, I would make sure you have one good minibot that can do the job you want it to before you start building a second.

In terms of this, you might one to check out the Minibot standardization thread

Re: Minibot - partnerships
 

Firstly, thanks for the speedy reply.

The 2-3 Micro robots idea was in case one bot couldnt make it to the Microbot scoring poles for some reason or another. From some other engineering projects ive learned the hard way that redundancy is not a bad thing and a fail-safe cant hurt if it means more potential points.

You do make a good point however on the manpower, currently our team is relatively small so depending on the state of the first robot, and the build time, a second bot would be possible.

I'll scour through the forums for that thread.
Thanks for the advice!

Re: Minibot - partnerships
 

Well, you could theoretically give one to an opponent, in hopes of boosting your ranking, but that's a risky game.

Also, I think it's highly unrealistic to think that MINIBOTS will be universal and interchangable between different teams' robots.

Re: Minibot - partnerships
 

This. Not to say that wouldn't be practical and all, but the chances of it happening seem kind of slim, and personally I'd love to see what different teams do with the Minibots. Although there will still be similarities across the board; I don't think it'd be too wise to assume anything about the other team having a Minibot all set up for you. (Or you having a Minibot for the other team which will work perfectly with their Hostbot.)

Re: Minibot - partnerships
 

Well, I think it'll be wise for most teams to create a 12'' x 12'' x 12'' deploying compartment in their hostbot, even if they don't have their own minibot, so they could use a minibot if supplied one.