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Originally Posted by Chris is me
Every field has tape on it, so therefore it's not flat, right?
The regolith was no more than 1/8" thick. At this point saying a field with a 1/8" depression "isn't flat" is just being pedantic. The miscellaneous hardware and debris that people build ground clearance into drivetrains in order to avoid is generally more than 1/8" tall. You would have to try very, very hard to design a drivetrain that would be issue free on a "truly flat" field that wouldn't work on a 2009 field (ignoring the wheel rules). 2009 is flat.
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Several bots at the Arizona Regional this year would challenge that assertion. As an inspector, I had to accompany no less than 3 back to their pits to help them figure out why the aforementioned "flat" tape as well as carpet strings... LONG ONES ...were being carried back with them in a huge mass in their drive train. Each of them had elements on the bottom mounting board that were exactly equal with the plane of the wheels, tangent to the ground. Any deviation from a "truly flat" field would have been even worse, say a 1/8" edge to climb.
One possible reason was the underlay beneath the carpet wasn't a surface like hardboard to protect the gym floor but 4'x4' foam tiles, like you put in a shop that gave the floor a slight cushioning effect. The deflection from a bot was very slight, but enough that quite a few bots were pulling up carpet and not just the tape. Those 3 just happened to be the worst ones I witnessed and could finger point that needed to be corrected before being allowed on the field again. A solid layer of packing tape across the bottom fixed the issue in all cases.
Because the field was "truly flat" with no built-in height deviation,
Quote:
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Originally Posted by EricH
A "truly flat" field does not have those plates underneath or other irregularities, just floor, tape, and robots. 2002 and 2014 are both in that category; 2009 is not because of the regolith/carpet transition.
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many bots I witnessed during inspections were designed for the undercarriage to be as close as possible without actually touching... much more so than I witnessed in previous years. Some took it too far and didn't account for the possibility that the floor wouldn't be concrete underneath the carpet.