What we learned from week 1

[dman14]

Originally Posted by thefro526

I guess my big problem with the pyramid rules as written are that they do not award any protection to a machine that is inside of the pyramid but not touching it. One would think that this robot is offered some sort of protection, but that is not the case.

Many teams, including my own, read the rules to the letter, and hence designed our robot in such a way that it will most certainly be touching it's tower while in shooting position. We discarded shooting from under the centre of the tower, and limited ourselves to the edges in order to be in the protection zone. I felt that it was a design constraint that needed to be given attention, rather than a loophole, or poorly written rule.

I don't have an objection to the tape on the floor idea, but I can see where other's objections may come from as it invalidates clever designs and fine tuned mechanisms that some teams may have built in order to touch the tower.