Ball deflectors.....don't

[Josh Goodman]

Pat's post is exactly how I interpreted it as well. The ball deflectors do keep the balls from jamming up near the pivot base of the bridge (where all the balls would go without them). The definition said it would help keep the balls from jamming....which it does. It never said anything about rolling them with grace out from under the bridge so your robot can sweep them up with ease.

With the right manipulator, the balls under the bridge are accessible to all teams. It might not have been as readable as "a mechanism to put balls into hoops", but it's clear many teams thought of this problem and built devices to compensate. In my mind, it's all part of the game.

[jlindquist74]

*hikes pants up a few inches above his waist*

Suggestion: Consider this a part of your engineering education.

If I had a nickel for every time a vendor's product didn't *quite* perform according to spec, or some library or application fell short of the claims in its documentation, or behaved in some odd way that got in the way of my efficiently-planned project or solution, I'd be long retired.

Sometimes you can get a vendor to fix what ails you. But often, there isn't enough time, enough money, enough material, or enough staffing to do it. (You may also not be a big enough customer/client to accommodate.) You will usually work around it as best you can, and move forward. Maybe you and the vendor can fix it for release 2, but business or market pressures say you gotta ship release 1 without that fix.

If you choose this for a profession, you will run into this a lot.

You might study other teams' designs--even if their robot design is radically different from yours, there may be an element you can adapt this weekend, or carry in to the next competition. Or maybe it will help you design workarounds next year, if you're an underclassman. Learning from others' work is half the fun, anyways...

[Ivan Helmrich]

In KC today, several matches saw balls under both sides of bridges. It turns out if the ball is near the end of the bridge, the thing has to be tipped all the way to the floor on the other side or the ball won't move.

I wouldn't complain about it as an impediment, it plays the same for all. If FIRST's goal is to make coopertition a cool thing for the crowd to see though, they missed the boat. The ball under the bridge seems to have a randomizing effect on how successful teams are. It is a very specific type of mechanism that can deal with it the way it is currently playing out.

Ivan

[Akash Rastogi]

Relevant- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Josh Goodman

With the right manipulator

Tape measure grappling hooks.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Tape measure grappling hooks.

Stacked on top of other robots to start the match.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Tape measure grappling hooks.

Another RI team used one of these to hang in 2010 quite successfully. Didn't even need an arm to lift it up to the bar, they just extended it up and lifted themselves up by retracting the tape.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Tape measure grappling hooks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y63OV_E7M-4 - nuff said

[Gary Dillard]

Head ref announced new rule today: teams are allowed to have a fifth team member on the side of the field giving hand signals so they can tell if there is a ball there, or anything else they want to signal apparently. Interesting.

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Gary Dillard

Head ref announced new rule today: teams are allowed to have a fifth team member on the side of the field giving hand signals so they can tell if there is a ball there, or anything else they want to signal apparently. Interesting.

Well, that's a new development... (Okay, so there were two coaches in 2001...but it's practically new.)

Can any of the other Week 1 events confirm this change?

[Steven Donow]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Well, that's a new development... (Okay, so there were two coaches in 2001...but it's practically new.)

Can any of the other Week 1 events confirm this change?

Watching the streams of the Hatboro-Horsham MAR District and Smoky Mountain Regional, this doesn't seem to be the case (of course the camera angle at HH doesn't show the middle, but Smoky Mountain shows the whole field). Though that would be an interesting change...

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Well, that's a new development... (Okay, so there were two coaches in 2001...but it's practically new.)

Can any of the other Week 1 events confirm this change?

Alamo did not have this change as far as I am aware and I was an inspector on the field for a lot of the competition.

[johnmaguire2013]

We were not allowed a fifth member at Kettering. Instead we tried to use crowd members to tilt a sign we had (we have four signs - 3, 3, 2, 2.) if a ball was stuck under a bridge (which confused our driver the very first match.)

However when we moved on the second day, even us in the crowd couldn't see the bridge from the other side.

[Andy A.]

Whether it's part of the design challenge or not, it's frustrating.

It's possible for the balls to get pinched between the polycarb 'deflector', and the field boarder on the alliance color bridge. Even with our ball pickup device, designed to lift the bridge and suck balls out, we couldn't clear them when they got like that. It's rare, but they're just plain stuck, and in a manner I don't think anyone expected.

Balls trapped under the bridge decided many matches. It's a bummer, and short of a change to the deflector that FIRST is likely unwilling to make, it's going to be a common one.

[wolfeman]

Originally Posted by Andy A.

Whether it's part of the design challenge or not, it's frustrating...

Balls trapped under the bridge decided many matches. It's a bummer, and short of a change to the deflector that FIRST is likely unwilling to make, it's going to be a common one.

It's water under the bridge at this point [pun intended] but having
just losing in the semis in Hatboro-Horsham due to this issue,
I have to agree. If you look at the original bride video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AMaq...eature=related

the big difference between the video and the actual field was the polycarb sheet sagged badly. It not even close to a flat sheet as shown in the
video and was ineffective in having balls roll back out.

It would be an egregious violation of the rules and gracious professionalism,
but an effective strategy would be for inbounders to 'accidentally'
send balls under an opponents bridge...