December Design Competition 2014: Tubular Touchdown

[Chirag]

First of all, this is awesome! Now I have something to satisfy my designing urges until build season.

A couple of questions. Can the mobile goals be intentionally moved or grasped during autonomous and/or teleop period/before the Fourth Down period? Can you move your goal or your opponent's goal to one side of the field or another? Also, are you able to grab the opponent's goal?

I only skimmed through the rules earlier and haven't had time to thoroughly read them so I apologize if my questions were already answered in the rules.

Originally Posted by Chirag

First of all, this is awesome! Now I have something to satisfy my designing urges until build season.

A couple of questions. Can the mobile goals be intentionally moved or grasped during autonomous and/or teleop period/before the Fourth Down period? Can you move your goal or your opponent's goal to one side of the field or another? Also, are you able to grab the opponent's goal?

I only skimmed through the rules earlier and haven't had time to thoroughly read them so I apologize if my questions were already answered in the rules.

We are glad you like our game! Everything you said is legal. Keep in mind that you need to predict how your opponents will play the game and respond to each of your actions. Some strategies seem really easy until you realize that there are robots who won't let you just do what you want willingly.

[Whippet]

Do the casters on the bottom of the mobile goals swivel or are they fixed?

Originally Posted by Whippet

Do the casters on the bottom of the mobile goals swivel or are they fixed?

They swivel.

[IronicDeadBird]

1. Does blocking a robots movement by use of the mobile goal qualify as a pin?

2. The mobile goals may not be grasped during Fourth down are we to assume that means a robot cannot grasp it but an alliance can by using multiple robots move it more effectively?

3. Is the horizontal extension limited to 20" in one direction or are we allowed to have multiple extrusions at once?

4. Are you allowed to load game balls into your robot pre-match and hold onto them until Fourth Down

5. Which determines the the position of the mobile goal at the end, its final resting position or its position at when the time runs out?

[Whippet]

Since we've now reached the halfway point into the competition, I would like to leave this small teaser of things to come:

Originally Posted by Whippet

Since we've now reached the halfway point into the competition, I would like to leave this small teaser of things to come:

Loving the design so far! Can't wait to see the whole thing!

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Whippet

Since we've now reached the halfway point into the competition, I would like to leave this small teaser of things to come:

Neat!

I would like to point teams toward some cool gate latch style mechanisms in 2010 that allowed robots to grab onto a vertical pole by driving into it, without actuating anything. The mechanisms used in 2010 didn't release, but I'm sure you can figure out a way to accomplish that.

Here's a picture of a pole grabbing mechanism 1114 used in 2010. The rules of this competition require the ability for such a mechanism to release. How could that be accomplished?

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird

1. Does blocking a robots movement by use of the mobile goal qualify as a pin?

2. The mobile goals may not be grasped during Fourth down are we to assume that means a robot cannot grasp it but an alliance can by using multiple robots move it more effectively?

3. Is the horizontal extension limited to 20" in one direction or are we allowed to have multiple extrusions at once?

4. Are you allowed to load game balls into your robot pre-match and hold onto them until Fourth Down

5. Which determines the the position of the mobile goal at the end, its final resting position or its position at when the time runs out?

1. Yes

2. The mobile goals may not be grasped during the Fourth down. It means what it means.

3.Similar to past rules, you can have multiple extensions

4. No you are not.'

5. While we do not expect the goals to be moving with a great enough velocity at the end of the match for it to matter, I will say 5 seconds after the match ends the match will be scored.

5 more days until submission time! We're Looking Forward to seeing what all y'all have done to complete this challenge!

[artK]

When/How can the community expect to see submissions and the winners?

Originally Posted by artK

When/How can the community expect to see submissions and the winners?

We are hoping to complete judging and contact the winners in the next day or so. From there if the winners are cool with us making it public we will announce it on this thread.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

We are hoping to complete judging and contact the winners in the next day or so. From there if the winners are cool with us making it public we will announce it on this thread.

Did you ever make any of the designs public? I'd love to see some of them.

[Whippet]

It appears that Andrew Lawrence's Chief Delphi account no longer exists. At this point, I seriously doubt that we will ever know who won.

[magnets]

Originally Posted by Whippet

It appears that Andrew Lawrence's Chief Delphi account no longer exists. At this point, I seriously doubt that we will ever know who won.

What did happen to Andrew's account? AFAIK, he's still involved with FIRST, and I did quite like his posts.

As for the design competition, I'm sad that nobody submitted. It was really well done, so our team may reuse these rules for design lessons/fake kickoff if we get around to meeting in the summer.