Quote:
Originally Posted by EricH
Practice matches need to be considered too, actually. See "fatigue life"--fatigue doesn't care if the cycles the material has gone through are in quals, elims, shop testing, or practice matches. What it cares about is, "I've gone through X,000 cycles, I'm about to *OUCH!* break." (Or has gone through some extra stress, but that's another topic.)
|
Also, with practice matches, robots are often pushed even harder than they would be in, for example, a qualification match. Teams want to see just how much their bot can handle and if certain strategies (especially "risk" strategies) have potential in an actual match or if the robot/driver skill does not present that strategy as a viable option.
Of course in these matches a team isn't going to push their robot to a breaking point. But, as an example, oftentimes this year a robot would carry more totes at one time to find an optimal cycle time strategy.