[archiver]

Posted by mike o'leary at 1/24/2001 7:50 PM EST


Student on team #419, rambots, from bc high.


In Reply to: little slower this year
Posted by Ken Leung on 1/23/2001 10:58 PM EST:



: This year's competition is a little different from the years before. I know everyone know that already, but my point is that because there won't be a much robot pushing against robots, the design doesn't require teams to aim for a really tough robot this year... but rather a delicate robot that can do things accurately. There are some teams out there who already started construction, but for us, we are choosing to make sure the design of the robot satisfy the range of parameter we decided at the beginning when we chose our strategy… That means lots of prototyping, lots of drafting/CADing, and not as much trying to build a working robot but to actually construct the robot out of the drawings and know it will work. So we are probably still in the prototyping phase.

i agree with you (about the no need for sturdy design cuz robots shouldnt be fighting) in theory but in practice i think that there will be contact between teams, mostly because driving the bots isnt the easiest thing, and theres a large degree of human error. and when you have 4 people driving 4 very different bots (and possibly...no probably...racing to be first on the bridge) it will develop a fair degree of contact. also when the bot goes over the bridge it will land with a good deal of force. i think that this year teams cant afford to not consider that there will be contact and damage done to their bot during the matches when designing it.