[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Part of the design challenge is to make sure your MINIBOT TRIGGERS the TOWER. Some TEAMS seem to have missed that. Apparently they thought the challenge was to get a minibot up the TOWER as quickly as possible.

If thats the case, then why did the first two weeks of the season use manual scoring to determine minibot race winners? There's no way for a human to know if a trigger was sensored from the ground. The GDC referred to the endgame as a race, we all refer to the endgame as a race, because it is a contest for teams to get their minibot up the tower as quickly as possible. Yes there are constraints, size, weight, motor usage, battery usage etc. One of those is the 2-4 N measurement the GDC added in to the game documentation.

The sticking point to me is that some teams clearly are exerting that force on the top plate. Maybe some of us feel more comfortable calculating the exact force required, but I'm comfortable enough with our minibot to say it hits the target hard enough to trip the switch. Now, if our minibot hits the target LONG enough to trip the switch is the big question because there is no requirement in the rules about length of time required to trip the switch.

If the GDCs intention was to make the entire challenge not just complying with the deployment rules, minibot part usage and the actual challenge of ascending the pole, but to also include the tripping of the sensor as a key factor, there should have been much more information provided besides "2-4 N". Whether this includes an approximate timeframe this force needs to be applied in or something else. To have every team interpret the field drawings of the tower sensor to determine if their minibot trips the sensor or not is insane to me.

Thats my only gripe. Now I don't know how big of a deal this all is. Al has told me to rest easy, and I trust Al, so I will do just that. I'll also be making sure our minibot runs are recorded on video just incase a sensor doesn't happen to trip. At least we'll be able to try to break down why it didn't that particular run.

-Brando