[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by manderson5192

I had envisioned a tube or suction cup of sorts that would need to be pointed at the floor with a rubber shroud going around the edges that would just barely clear the ground. Here are my concerns though: 1) How do I make sure the shroud doesn't touch the ground, thereby violating <R06>, and 2) Will this even work to a good extent? Will there be too great of a loss of vacuum?

Thought I'd contribute something back to the general knowledge pool:

My team prototyped a "ground sucker" today by attaching not 1, but 3 shop vac's to a rubbermaid storage container, inverted so the open side is pressed against the floor. When the container was flush against the floor, the vacuums had no problem completely collapsing it. At noticeably less than 1/16" above the floor, we felt some force, but anything above this there was no significant force. Not to say that this isn't possible, but as was pointed out earlier, 1771's success last year was largely due to getting a good seal on the ball. Our findings suggest that for this to work this year, a team would have to manufacture with very close tolerances, and any kind of flexing in the frame would cause the vacuum chamber to touch the floor; as such a robot such as this might not make it past inspection.

Has anyone else found different results?

--Ryan