[tindleroot]

Originally Posted by Dave Campbell

I'm with Glenn, the rule change about can grabbing center cans in auton really hinders our Recycle Rush game play. Our auton can grabber was a great feature that we designed, built and implemented during the build season and proved that it worked with a week two event Win in Pittsburgh, a week 6 Finalist at Queen City and with GREAT partners won the Carver Division and played on Einstein. Too bad the IRI rules exclude one of our best assets from the entire season.

Hey Chris - suggestion - grandfather clause -NON-CHEESECAKED robots that had designed and used can grabbers in their initial match of their first event for the season, should be able to use them in auton to grab ANY cans, left or right, off the step at IRI.

As well intentioned as your idea is, something like that would be bad for an event because: 1) some teams will have an "unfair" advantage in the sense that they can use a mechanism that many teams cannot (because whether you used a canburglar at your first event is already decided for all teams). 2) The can wars would then resume. 3) said teams would necessarily get picked early if the cans off the step could win the game.

I agree that the effort teams have put into certain canburglar designs is unfairly lost, but I don't think there is any better solution than IRI has implemented. If the teams want to use a canburglar, it should be fairly easy to redesign it for only one side - speed doesn't matter now, so simpler designs are possible.