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Originally Posted by Mike Ciance
wedges give robots a clear and unfair advantage. shouldn't a pushing match be decided by the strength of the drivetrains, rather than who makes a cheap shot?
we put a lot of work into our drivetrain. nobody could push us back... as long as we had all our wheels on the ground. on friday at nationals this year a wedgebot got under us and pushed us halfway across the field with little effort. at both of the regionals we attended we saw other teams getting pushed around by wedges.
in this game and in games of the past there have been robots with wedges that obviously have no function in the game itself. what reason is there for a wedge other than to get under other robots? wedges are just as unfair as pinning, and i can't imagine why FIRST hasn't already made rules against it.
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How does it give an "unfair advantage"? As long as anyone can put a "wedge" on their robot it is
not unfair. I don't see how you can say that since your drive train is more powerful that someone shouldn't be allowed to create a design to deflect the force from your robot. I believe our robot was the one that pushed you across the field on Friday. We designed the front and back of our robot as a sloped angel (I think 48 degrees from the base) for the sole reason of deflecting force. Last year we had some robot ram us and damage parts of our frame, by putting a sloped front on the robot a portion of the momentum of a robot is pushed up off the frame, and the rest is spread out throughout the entire frame instead of having two bars on the back take all the force (and most likely bend or break). If we had designed it to flip you, you would have been flipped, but instead we just pushed you back so that we could get to our loading zone.
I agree that the problem is not in the robots, but in the way they are driven.