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Unread 08-02-2016, 18:53
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Electrical/Programming Mentor
FRC #2177 (The Robettes)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Rookie Year: 2006
Location: Minnesota
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Re: Terrifying Karthik

Being a team that is working towards the low bar, I can tell you... it is a SIGNIFICANT engineering challenge to do the low bar and everything else. The low bar is one of 5 defenses your team will have to face in each match, and successfully tackling the other defenses becomes much easier when you have more room in your robot to work with. Add to that scoring - as others have said, a low point of release makes you easy to block on the field. Then add on climbing at the end - having a mechanism that lets you successfully climb with this year's rules limitations is difficult. It's even more difficult when you ask said mechanism to fit within ~10" of space and expand to over 6'.

These are all significant engineering challenges to fit into such a small space. What he's afraid of, I think, is that the challenge is way too big for most teams. Yes, there will be some that accomplish it with style. There will be others that accomplish it by intentionally forgoing other aspects of the game. But I think most of them will end up compromising too much, leaving themselves with a robot that has poorly performing mechanisms in every other aspect of the game. That's the fear - that teams are turning an already difficult challenge into a nearly impossible one for the sake of a single defense.
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2007 - Present: Mentor, 2177 The Robettes
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2016: Lake Superior WFFA
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