Thread: On Game Design
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Unread 29-04-2004, 22:05
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Post Re: On Game Design

Here's a serious question that perhaps some have not thought about_:

What percent of your team's budget is put into building the robot?

I would say that most typical small-medium teams are running budgets of 20-30k aren't limited by the costs on building the robot. The $5,000 for the first competition and $4,000 for a second regional, plus all of the buses or airplane tickets hotel arrangements... this isn't cheap stuff. This is prohibitive.

Money doesn't help you build a better robot... or even level the field. Great engineers will do more with less.

The real quality difference isn't the cost, it's the machining setup. If you or a local sponsor has access to CNC equipment, you've got a huge advantage to the small team using hand drills in a janitor's closet. This is a fact of life, and nothing can change this. Team 461 has CNC's set up at their high school... which has been a huge advantage. Lots of money, lots of top notch engineers and high school students, large facilities, and off season programs are making FIRST teams more competitive. Each teams needs to decide for themselves how much they want to invest in being competive, and how much they want to invest in engineering inspiration. They are only mildly intertwined.

As to regards to this years game, I don't think that picking up a ball and placing it on the goal was an extraordinatorly difficult task. However, hanging was trickier for one reason... so I'll go a little off topic.

It would be a very different game this year if the bar was 8 or 9 feet off the ground instead of 10. Because of the robot's 5 foot height limit, you couldn't have a two link arm fold in on itself once and be tall enough to reach over the 10 foot bar to hang. Hanging required an arm to either two revolute joints, or a revolute and prismatic joint. This makes arms much more complicated in terms of finding kinematic solutions for object placement by the drivers, and requires an additional motor to provide this function. You could get around this requirement by being able to climb the 6" steps, but often still, many teams still required an additional link on their robot due to the angle of approach and additional length required.

Anyway, those are some thoughts. Thanks to everyone for bringing up this interesting topic.

Matt
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Last edited by Matt Adams : 29-04-2004 at 22:09.
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