Gus 228's 1.3 second Minibot

[kaliken]

Originally Posted by skimoose

Our deployment is legal and follows designs already used at several regionals. The minibot has no stored energy other than the battery. The ramp imparts no energy prior to, during, or after the start of deployment. The only benefit to the ramp is that the minibot is allowed to accelerate without the need to overcome gravity immediately. More importantly, after numerous prototype designs, we feel it is one of the most reliable ways to deploy the minibot as it is already in contact with the pole via the ramp extension.

wow glad someone brought this up. I was just going to start a thread on this. So I will at least try to keep this discussion alive.
I hope to not be offensive but I want to point out a couple things I see.
First off I do not see how you can say that your minibot has no stored energy other than the battery. If we take the state of you minibot a split second before deployment starts(crossing the vertical projection of the tower) you cannot say that your minibot does not have kinetic energy inside it. Especially since the minibot is moving! This is the problem I am having.

I have no problem with the ramps as it was something my team was also planning on doing. However we were a bit nervous on the ruling and did not want to get an illegal ruling especially at champs

Given that, my interpretation is that a minibot that starts deployment from rest and goes up a ramp should be deemed legal (see 1678's ramp+minibot video) and is an elegant solution to the problem. whereas a minibot that starts accelerating before the start of deployment and has kinetic energy stored in it to go up a ramp should be deemed illegal.

Finally the incidental motor+ wheel kinetic energy is just that, motor and wheel. This means that that kinetic energy is not contributing to the kinetic energy of the system.