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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 1/28/2000 8:33 PM MST


In Reply to: Bumper issues (long & complex) posted by Joe Johnson on 1/28/2000 5:35 PM MST:



Here is another thought and a reason for FIRST to reconsider this 'vertically centered about 6.5 inches' idea:

For the veteran teams, think back to any game with rubber balls. How many times have you seen teams design robots that contact a ball at or above the tangent point of the ball? Just about as many times as you have seen a machine that could not push a ball out of the way and ended up having to drive AROUND balls rather than face the embarassing truth -- a ball in the way may as well be a mountain, go around it 'cause we ain't going to push it out of our way.

If it were not so unfunny it would be hilarious. It was not uncommon to find a machine unable to move in a sea of balls because a ball was in front of them and another had rolled behind them. They were stuck in the middle with no way of pushing the balls out to the way because they did not contact the ball below the center of the ball. If they did try to push a ball, they rolled up on top of it causing them to loose traction and sometimes even flipping them over. In fact, we won a match in the semi-finals due to this exact problem in 1998.

Anyway, my point is that FIRST is sort of requiring teams with bumpers to face this problem. The problem will be especially bad with bumpers that are like the one shown in the example in the rules (if the energy absorbing material is somewhat grippy, they don't stand a chance in this game).

Just my two cents worth.

Joe J.