Quote:
Originally Posted by NatashaWhyte
For those who were asking, it was a strategic decision agreed to by all three teams for 1547 to act as a tether for both 610 and 1114's ramps.
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We did pass transport configuration with the robot, and in order to swiftly go through matches, we loaded the ramps on and off our robot before we got on to the field as requested by the Head Ref.
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Very clever strategy.
A few questions:
- How much did 610 and 1114's ramps weigh?
- Were they constructed from raw materials at the event, or were they part of those teams 30 pound weight allowance?
- If they were not constructed at the event, and they were not part of your own own 30 pound weight allowance, how did you get around R17?
- Was it necessary to remove weight from your robot prior to a second inspection that included the ramps?
- At the second inspection, were you required to submit an amended robot BOM including the ramps?
Please do not misinterpret these questions as implying any sort of misconduct. In fact, I'm assuming that everything was completely legal, and want to learn how you accomplished your reconfiguration within the rules. For the first time, we are possibly planning to do some major reconfiguration of our robot between competitions. We very much want to understand the legalities of how top teams use the weight limit, weight witholding, and reconfiguration rules to make reconfigurations such as this.
Depending on the answers to these questions, I'm drawing some conclusions which might be in error.
1) If the ramps were prebuilt, and not part of 1547's 30 pound weight allowance, this implies that R17 does not restrict robot A to being constructed from fabricated parts from only team A's weight allowance. In fact, team A could recruit teams B, C, D, E and F to bring 20 pounds each, and team A could legally construct an entire new robot using their own and their friends weight allowances. A practical impossibility, but interesting to consider.
2) We have been entirely too constrained by Rule T9, "At the time of Inspection, the robot must be presented with ALL mechanisms (including all components of each mechanism), configurations, and decorations that will be used on the robot DURING THE COMPETITION EVENT." (emphasis mine) We took this to mean that if we changed configurations during the event, all the components needed to be weighed as part of the robot during the initial inspection. In fact, it appears that a team may remove and add components at will, as long as they are reinspected between each reconfiguration. We only need to include the components of these multiple configurations in the weight total if we plan on reconfiguring WITHOUT re-inspection. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. We had thought that if we wanted to use one sort of arm for picking up cans from the floor (config A) in some matches, and swap out a different mechanism for pulling cans from the step (config B) in others, that both mechanisms needed to be presented at initial inspection, and included in the 120 pound weight limit. Rather, it appears that we can have one 119 pound configuration inspected initially. Then, later, we can remove one 15 pound mechanism A, replace it by another 15 pound mechanism B, reinspect, and legally play matches.
This is the reason why we encourage our students to study webcasts of earlier competitions than ours. It's amazing to see how top alliance's out-of-the-box strategic thinking makes them great. We need to encourage our team to think beyond just our own robot and expand our thinking to include ways to leverage our alliance partners.