Quote:
Originally Posted by IndySam
I like the one you guys did at Purdue better. Andy told me the plan was to go around the rack to the backside but when your robot went screaming into the spider leg at full speed I thought the whole armory shook. What was amazing was that the whole top of the robot didn't come off. Great construction.
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Thanks, Scott...
We had this automode, code named "Back in Black". We would back up, full speed (13 fps), stop, and then look for the light. The plan was to place a tube on our opponent's side of the rack. The only time we would ever plan to use it was if we were opposed from a robot that did not move (would not want to ram them), and our partner was going for the middle column in auto.
So... during one of our Q matches at Boilermaker, our drive team decided to try this. The robot went full speed, backwards, and hit the left side spider legs. The spider legs resisted the impact and tipped the robot over. Either the drive team did not aim the robot correctly, or the robot veered to the right too much while backing up.
The head ref was ticked at us for that one, and said that if our drive team did it again, they would be DQ'ed for field damage.
We did not run that mode ever again, even at the Championships.
I have still not seen a video of that match. If I find one that is digital, I will post a link here.
The unfortunate thing about this was that a reporter from our hometown newspaper just happened to walk in to the arena at this same time as this match. While we explained what exactly happened, and what "automode" was, he could not understand that this was simply an aiming error. In the next day's paper, the writer talked about our mistake in how we wrote the code, and how the drivers should have chosen to drive during this part of the match. He just could not get past this dramatic wreck and didn't understand that we actually meant to send our robot backwards that fast.
AB