Air Defense System

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by tcjinaz

And if I am sitting in the opposition's key, I'm at 84in for the sensor, shooter or both.

If you are in the opponent's key, then you are on the carpet on your alliance station's end of the court, and therefore you can only expand to 60 inches as per rule G20.

[G20] (emphasis mine)

"Robots in contact with the carpet on their Alliance Station end of the Court are limited to 60 in tall. Otherwise, Robots are limited to 84 in tall.

Violation: Foul; or Technical-Foul for repeated or continuous violation."

[Ninja_Bait]

Originally Posted by tcjinaz

NASA historically doesn't try to hit other things. Other Agencies (SDI, <litany of US DoD orgs> et al) have tried and succeeded to do so, repeatedly.

That's what they do all the time. They hit Mars, the Moon and at least two (?) asteroids with little probes. And the planets are slow and much bigger than the probes, and it's STILL not easy.

As for deflection, I think everyone is overestimating the effects of "tiny" disruptions. If I aimed and shot a ball intended for the middle of a hoop, it has more than 5 inches of tolerance in any direction. If it hits the rim or backboard first, there is still a good chance of it scoring. You can't push it far enough.

[staplemonx]

I like the idea and in general you only need to impact the trajectory of a ball by a few degrees. We are putting this on our want list and may get to after we bag the robot.

[bhaidet]

I think we should get a GIANT hair dryer and capture the balls midair with the venturi effect (like ping pong balls on normal hair dryers). LOL

and on a realistic note, there was a team with a fan my freshman year (to navigate the lunacy regolith). might have been delphi elite ? it was a huge (about 2 foot) wooden-bladed fan on the back of the bot with a cage around it. I have not yet picked up one of these "basketballs" so I don't know how dense they are and if a fan could actually affect it . This would be AWESOME but you would need a fan to take up your entire horizontal dimension and probably add a cowling besides to focus the blast/stream. if you had a 2 foot fan you would have 2" all the way around for a cowling I think.