[Squillo]

OK, now I *have* read all the posts (in this thread, anyway). So here's my two cents.

A fellow team member pointed out that there are some interesting new items being sold by AndyMark this year, including a plethora of smaller-sized wheels and some kind of lazy-susan turntable thing that can support up to 300 lbs. That got us thinking that maybe there will be a reason for robots to be smaller or lower (the wheels) and maybe one of those reasons would be that it could be more easily lifted/supported by another robot (hence the need to bear >100 lbs.).

To me, this fits in with the "assist" angle, as in one robot "assisting" another to do something by lifting it up to do it. There might be choices to be made, such as to design your robot to be a "lifter" or a "liftee"; assisting/coopertition (robots on the same alliance OR on different alliances could lift each other), and possibly climbing something (a staircase?). Also, a staircase would be something "impressive". I would think this would probably be an end-game thing, based on recent years - they tend to be trending toward an autonomous that is similar to teleop (hanging tubes, shooting balls/frisbees), a teleop that involves repetitive scoring possibilities, and an endgame that involves lifting or balancing something, a challenge different from the main scoring paradigm (lifting a minibot, lifting/balancing robots on the bridge, lifting robots up the pyramid - wasn't there some kind of hanging thing in 2010 too? I forget...)

The assisting could come into the scoring (maybe the only way to score in a high goal would be for two robots to cooperate?) or the endgame lifting/balancing phase, or both.

3 days to go!