[stevek]

One Idea we had, but never sent time to develop or implement, was to hang and create an identical "bar" from our robot, that would be the same height and position as the field bar when we were in the hanging position. So if we hung, another robot would have a standard element to hang off of. I had a few sketches (using the vertical poles as braces to support the weight and everything) but once the team decided to keep the bot low and go under the tunnel it never got thought of again. Ofcourse that evolved and we have an arm that hangs and we cant go under anything (except the ball return track) and noone thought to implement the other features. But we can hang from the floor or the bump and it works fairly consistnetly. We hung 5 or 6 times in the UTC Pre-Ship Scrimmage. In fact that would make us the first to hang on an official field this season... but it was only a scrimmage!!!

I'm glad to see a few teams figured out how to score (9-10 point games are the highest I saw one Michigan regional was either 10 or 12 during elims). I think if they made hanging few more points more teams would have done it. But look at the results from regionals... how many game results would be reversed with a 2 point bonus. And what if two or three robots hung. I dont htink I ever saw multiple hangers on the same allance. What a shame... those 4-6 points alone would have won 75% of all the matches I saw. So it might not seem like alot of points for one team to spend the time, but multiply that by three robots! I also want Autonomous to be more points... a bonus for the hard work. This is why only a few robots even moved. I saw one that does what we do... three long balls form zone three. many robots just sit and wait. If they made it more points people would have thought about it and innovated more.