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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
And where is the spec for how much force or impact your bot must be able to withstand in a match? saying it must be robust is weasle-words - no matter what you build I guarentee you I can build something stronger and put an impact point on my machine, find your weak spot and take you out on the field
then all I have to do to defend my actions is point to the 'robust' words in the manual, and tell you its your fault your bot couldnt take a little rough play.
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The specs are the laws of physics dealing with conservation of energy.
There is going to be a 130 pound robot coming at you at 12 feet per second, going after the same ball / goal / inner tube / whatever that you are. That energy is going to be transferred to your robot. It needs to either be strong enough to take the impact or flexible enough to absorb it.
There is going to be a 30 pound arm swinging at the maximum energy of the motors / pistons available to grab the same ball / bar / goal/ whatever that you are, and parts of your robot is going to frequently, very frequently be in the path of action. It needs to either be strong enough to take the impact or flexible enough to absorb it.
We had PVC wings to push the balls - should our opponents be penalized if they tear them off during a match? No - we understand that they will generally take the load, we keep them stowed whenever possible, and we keep lots of spares to replace them.
In 2002 national finals when we drove full bore into the goal and into Beatty, we had no intention of damaging them; if you saw their robot it seemed pretty likely they would have won that confrontation. Our only choice was to knock them off course so they wouldn't be in position to grab the goals. Worked pretty well - does anyone think we should have been DQ'd?
Our team used to have a rule for our drivers for aggressive play: if you break their robot you get to go their pits and help them fix it. Still a good rule.
Just remember, it's not about winning. Winning is fun, we try to win, but that's just icing if we do.