Team 1058 studies Squishimetrics..and Needs Your Help!

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

Great idea! This is going to be a very variable problem for many teams if no answers are provided soon. I know for sure that the top teams will find a way to overcome this, but for us middle-teams, this will just give us some more math to do (I'm not mad about that. ).

Thanks for the post! I'm sure many teams will find this infinitely useful. Now what's the difference between a new ball, and a well-used ball?

The answer is build a robust mechanism or choose a robust strategy so that the density of the ball doesn't matter. Very large tolerances have been part of FIRST for quite some time, and I don't think it's a bad thing. As Gene Kranz said, "I don't care what it was designed to do... I care what it can do!" Picking up a deflated inner tube or scoring a broken moonrock might not be quite as glorious as returning three astronauts from deep space, but it is often a difference maker in close matches.

I'm curious what kind of math you plan on using to combat density differences? Will you weight each ball and adjust your mechanism accordingly? It has been my experience in FIRST that if you have to fiddle with it extensively to get it to work, you're probably better off with a more direct approach.