[FTC]: NEW ROBOT DESIGNS!

[Wayne TenBrink]

Originally Posted by jcarr

I like the way that your robot worked, but we ran into a problem at competition when a sister team tried a similar design and similar autonomous routine.

Your robot may have been in violation of the possession rule <GR2>. Forum entry 12 in game rules and game play seems to match your situation and seems to indicate that you should have received multiple 10-point penalties. Was there any discussion by the refs?

In our case, we had to change our autonomous and teleop so that the rings were never on the robot, despite them sliding off immediately, but of course they didn't get as close to the pegs and sometimes rolled quite far when we did not give them a ramp.

We did look into it and discuss it with the referees. They didn't have a problem with it because it always passed the "do the rings stay with the robot when you back up" test (they don't). The rings may fall down the robot or get herded en masse, but the only one in our possession is the one in the gripper.

[jcarr]

Originally Posted by Wayne TenBrink

We did look into it and discuss it with the referees. They didn't have a problem with it because it always passed the "do the rings stay with the robot when you back up" test (they don't). The rings may fall down the robot or get herded en masse, but the only one in our possession is the one in the gripper.

We tried the argument, but that is where the forum entry came into play, since the ring's weight is supported by the robot and moving the robot back quickly, would have the effect of moving the ring back with the robot while it is on the slide, however briefly. We just changed our approach when they said no.

I might suggest getting an official ruling on it in the forum (and be as specific as you can so that you can show it to a ref) to protect yourself, because some refs will rule it illegal and some obviously won't. You would hate to advance, then be told your robot was illegal and rack up 80 penalty points. We did not do well when we had to change our approach at the tournament.

Good luck.

[Wayne TenBrink]

Originally Posted by jcarr

We tried the argument, but that is where the forum entry came into play, since the ring's weight is supported by the robot and moving the robot back quickly, would have the effect of moving the ring back with the robot while it is on the slide, however briefly. We just changed our approach when they said no.

I might suggest getting an official ruling on it in the forum (and be as specific as you can so that you can show it to a ref) to protect yourself, because some refs will rule it illegal and some obviously won't. You would hate to advance, then be told your robot was illegal and rack up 80 penalty points. We did not do well when we had to change our approach at the tournament.

Good luck.

The FTC game manual, Section 1.5, uses the "back up" example in the definition of "possession". There is a Q&A entry about possession, and the answer just points back to section 1.5 of the game manual. Unless the rings came to a stop on robot and moved with the chassis, it doesn't meet the definition of possession. As for team 6043, our season is done. In Michigan, the only teams that make it to the Championship are the Inspire Award winners. Our alliance partner 5385 earned that award and will represent our state well.

[RRLedford]

In past possession definition clarifications, if game elements would immediately separate from the robot by just its spinning motion, one way or another, this was declared an non-posession scenario.

I do agree though that an official ruling should be requested in this case, and I expect that it will be favorable.

-Dick Ledford

[Kyle_5955]

Thank you for posting all of the great robot pictures. I have really appreciated seeing all of the great ideas. My team is rookie team from Alberta, Canada, and we have tried to make a simple and effective robot that has several strategy options for tournaments. Our robot is a six wheeled slide-drive-like robot with a three segment cascading forklift that raises an arm with two joints which holds two rings and can reach all three rack heights. Our robot also has a four segment ramp which can be released to allow other robots to climb onto our robot for the end-game. We will be competing Saturday, January 12 at the Canadian Championship.

We have a video of our build season, with more of our robot coming soon, on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/swatbotsrobotics