2006 game hints?

[Petey]

Originally Posted by phrontist

YESSSSSSSS!!!

Okay guys, start paging through his post history...

Let's see.

Originally Posted by dlavery

Guy: Tell me why we are doing this again?
Girl: Because Billfred dropped a hint about making a robot that can change lightbulbs. I figured that we should take the hint, since he is on the GDC and he should know.

Robot with fine motor skills?

Originally Posted by dlavery

Not at all. An amazing amount can be done with welding, brazing, housed joints, polymer-based adhesives, rivets, spring clips, e-rings, Dutchman pins, proper interference fits, pocket hole joinery, soldering, collaring, swaging, pinned tenon joints, etc. etc. etc. There are LOTS of ways to connect one item to another without using the bolt/washer/nut answer that almost everyone defaults to - and without resorting to cheap-looking tape.

I really like the idea of a rule that will really push teams about of their "comfort zone" and into an area where they have to think about ways to solve problems by other than the obvious solution.

-dave

[/me gets off hobby horse]

Lowered budget?

Originally Posted by dlavery

Very cool! Now we can get a transparent yttrium oxide ceramic dome to cover the CMUcam so it doesn't get trashed when our robot spins out of control again (everyone that went to IRI remembers our "death spiral dance"). But I wonder if it will fit within the robot parts budget...

-dave

Uh...raised budget?

Originally Posted by dlavery

So far, everyone is takling their personal pet peeve and trying to find a way to make the rule associated with a certain topic/application/mechanism less restrictive. That is fine, and everyone is certainly entitled to riding their own hobby horse. So I will hop on mine. I think that folks are headed in the wrong direction. I think that we should look for potential rules that can be made MORE restrictive, and scale back the "almost anything goes" philosophy that has become associated with the robot construction rules over the past several years. I believe that this philosophy has lead to a lot less true creativity and innovation in the robots, as teams have just gone out and bought solutions to design problems rather than creating solutions from a kit part that was never intended to do the job for which it would now be used. I would be all in favor of adding more restrictions back in to the robot construction rules to bring back some of the real creativity that every team displayed during the early years of FIRST.

For example, what about a rule that says "no threaded fasteners of any type are permitted on the robot."* If it were up to me, I would add a rule like that. Oh, wait, it is...

-dave

* you think I am joking, don't you? hehhehheh

....Lowered budget????

I'm worried about the water game after this little exchange, specifically because of Dave's selective editing:

Originally Posted by Veselin Kolev

There have always been problems with using mecanum for FIRST: firstly the programming and control is tricky, and making the wheel itself is rather anoying. I for one will hopefully be having a mecanum robot this year, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining. I chose to go this path... but anyway, this article is a very interesting one. I appreciate how they push the design of the mecanum wheel to its limit in efficiency. However, I think the most I would ever consider is putting pneumatic locks on the rollers to improve forward efficiency.

Thanks for posting this article.

Originally Posted by dlavery

Oh? Why?


-dave

Originally Posted by Adam Richards

Dave, don't be mean to people who haven't already read the technical specs for this year's water game. It's not our fault we aren't on the game design committee.

Originally Posted by dlavery

Admittedly, a bit tongue-in-cheek. But not entirely. There are multiple layers of real questions embedded in that simple little two-word interrogatory. Not all questions, and not all data, are obvious.

-dave

p.s. if you reacted quickly like some and think that the original question means "hey, don't use Mechanum wheels this year" then you haven't looked deep enough.

Originally Posted by dlavery

Hmmm. Funny you should mention that. Somebody once told me that Tammy Trimble used to be a majorette...

-dave

I went back through mid-August on these posts.

So it looks like we've either got
A) A drastically lowered budget with a restricted supply list that requires more creative ingenuity a-la Apollo 13
or
B)A raised budget that at least allows space age materials so we can do some sort of aquatic game.

And either A) or B) will invovle picking up sticks, which is very difficult to do, when you think about it. Fine motor skills on the robot.

Personally, I'm predicting A. I don't think the organization has got the cojones for aquatic robotic warfare yet.

--Petey