[Billfred]

Those of us who came to FRC in the modern era came to a game that has long outlawed detached robot elements. What if a game came about that utilized them with a few restraints?

What comes to mind is an optional team-built element that could act as a tool to help out a robot or alliance. No electronics on board, and probably some size and weight restrictions. (Make it easy on inspectors, put another set of notches on the robot sizing box like they did for 2007 and drop the bar down.) Teams could place these elements as they wished, provided they weren't touching the robot (though grabbing on or mating up would be permitted) and subject to game-specific restrictions (no blocking an opponent's corner goal in Aim High, for example).

Some imagined uses in past FRC games:

-2006 (Aim High): Perhaps one of the most epic plays of the year was the A-Bomb, where a floor-only 195 dumped their load into the intake roller of shooter 968. Teams might opt to build their own external hopper to trigger their own A-Bombs independent of an alliance partner and without having to wait for human players to load them up. The more successful teams would figure out how to make it so that only their robot could reach the balls within.

-2007 (Rack 'N Roll): Many teams built deployable ramps for their partners to climb onto for the end-of-match bonus. A team that could devise an unpowered system that folded up small enough to fit in some mythical size requirement (and particularly if the wedge rules remained in force until the end-game) would have a significant advantage in weight to use elsewhere.

Alternatively, a team might've chosen a more useful way of loading their robot with tubes. Many teams chose the least-common-denominator (the floor), to the point that the slots on the corners of the field were rarely used. (I didn't see a team use them until BattleCry that year.) Perhaps some team would devise a killer widget for lining their tubes up for a quick grab.

-2005 (Triple Play): Probably wouldn't have been a factor in the match, but I bet a fair number of teams would consider a mobile platform in anticipation of stacks going higher than they'd normally design an arm for.

-2004 (FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar): A particularly ambitious team might choose to build a catcher for the ball dumps, actuated by an autonomous nudge or grab. If the team figured out how to funnel that catch into the ball chutes at the corners of the field, they'd blow out of the water many of the teams whose catching strategies faltered at that crucial final step. (I remember 21 struggled with that very issue throughout the Palmetto Regional that year, though the sheer audacity of the idea in a year where we were effectively a window-motor-drive box on wheels that might uncap the mobile goal made it one of the robots that hooked me on FRC.)

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I think it could add an interesting element to the right game. Am I nuts?