[EricH]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

It's similar, but it's not the same. If your robot gets rammed from the side, the wheels take loads they're not intended to handle.

And if you give a wheel too much side load, it can lose its hub. That's how we break wheels on our practice robot--lots of run time plus a little too much side load=hubless wheel.

Also, you ram your robot into the wall. Let's say that your robot travels 10 ft/s. (just a realistic, round number) Now, let's say that you have two such robots and they meet head-on at full speed. That's the same as hitting the same wall at 20 ft/s, plus a bit. I'll let you do the math (force, impact, energy, whatever), but if your robot can't handle that, it can't handle the somewhat faster speeds it'll see coming its way on the field.

I think a ramming sensor is a good idea--it'll give the refs an idea of where the rough play is happening and who is doing it--but it'll be tough to implement easily separate from the RC. It should be provided or easily built if one is used. Requirements might include:

1. visual indicator
2. easily visible
3. able to detect sudden course changes
4. not able to connect with the RC (or be interfered with by the RC)
5. small and light, but not included in the weight budget (as some teams might not wish to carry one because they'll be playing defense)
6. easily mountable.

Meeting all of these will be tough.