Fastest Possible Canburglar

[Thad House]

The rules state that the landfill is bounded by but not including the guardrail. However the rules also say that the field is bounded by and including the guardrail. And since G7 just states you can't be in the landfill, and must be fully supported by the carpet or scoring platform, it is legal to actually go around the landfill. And since the guardrail is said to be inside the field, it becomes really hard to actually call it illegal. Now mechanically this device is very difficult to make, because it has to be cantilevered 6 ft out and then 10 feet into the field. We tried building it out of square tube, and twisted the bar close to 70 degrees. But in the end we did have a 2 can version working.

And yes it was able to be setup in 60s. Their drive team was practicing all through elims.

This game actually had a ton of loopholes. Like for instance purposely taking a G7 penalty was still only a disable. So technically if a team didn't mind getting a robot disabled, they could have started in the holes, and had another robot pulling that bot, and potentially using the manual actuation buttons on the pneumatics to move arms and such.

I just wish we would have figured this out before last week so we would actually have had time to build something cool.

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by BigJ

FIELD includes the width of the guardrail, and LANDFILL ZONE doesn't include the "and including" wording. That's my guess.

So the definitions in the rules on pg 9 I believe are much clearer then the glossary. And there was a Q&A stating that the rules overrule the glossary.

[Bennett548]

Hmm, I was thinking in a different direction: G7 states that when the robots are placed on the field they must be outside the landfill. It doesn't say that the robot has to stay outside the landfill there until the start of the match. So have a slow-moving mechanism that slowly flops down to the can during the time before the match starts, and while the FTAs are trying to fix the broken FMS system.
My loophole is much more likely to be closed immediately by a ref. A ref actually told me that if our canburglar was to be spring-loaded and accidentally move into the land-fill he would likely ask us to fix it, or disable us if it happens again.

You should have tried carbon fiber tube to build your mechanism, but that is a lot of cash to drop on something that could be decided to be illegal.

[Jean Tenca]

It was too bad we couldn't put out "Jenny" (our internal code name for the project) at the event. We were all very eager to see reactions when we pulled out a 0 second step can grabber haha

If this game is played at IRI, I look forward to seeing some really crazy solutions for canburgling. Hopefully we'll see some harpoons in action!

[BMiller2559]

Okay admittedly I am new to the nuances of creative rule interpretation as a first year mentor, but I don't see it. The Landfill is described in 2.1.5 as "an infinitely tall volume ...". The term volume implies bounded in 3 dimensions so I do not see how going in from the end, if I am understanding your plan, qualifies as being "outside'" the landfill as required by G7c. In my world, there is no way to be in contact the RC without being inside the defined volume.

[BigJ]

One volume is bound by the outside of the guardrail, and the other is bound by the inside, by the letter of the rules. There is technically a guardrail-wide channel in which the robot can snake a structure through to the step without ever entering the landfill volume.

[AGPapa]

Originally Posted by BMiller2559

Okay admittedly I am new to the nuances of creative rule interpretation as a first year mentor, but I don't see it. The Landfill is described in 2.1.5 as "an infinitely tall volume ...". The term volume implies bounded in 3 dimensions so I do not see how going in from the end, if I am understanding your plan, qualifies as being "outside'" the landfill as required by G7c. In my world, there is no way to be in contact the RC without being inside the defined volume.

Does this help?

[Jean Tenca]

Originally Posted by AGPapa

Does this help?

Yup! We implemented just one side (2 cans) due to the tremendous torque on the system with the circular aluminum tubing we could source before worlds. If our team had the time, budget, and experience with carbon fiber we would likely have built an attachment to go all the way across.

Karthik always says "Read the rules" and our team has taken that to heart (I love his talks. If you haven't seen them you should).

[mintyfresh]

I was definitely surprised by the amount of different mechanisms for grabbing the trashcans that came around after the last day of regionals. I don't know if the judges really expected that onslaught of teams trying to grab the cans in so many different ways and I have no idea what was up to inspection. The coolest thing, I would say, about the canburgler wars at worlds was the fact that it was really the only "defense" in the game this year so it was interesting at certain points to see that play out.

[carpedav000]

Originally Posted by RoboChair

This guy knows whats up.

The only real hindrance would be the speed of your release mechanism. I was imagining a 2-speed gearbox with a set of gears taken out. Use the one remaining ratio to draw back and then shift to where the second ratio would be. #pneumaticquickrealeaseftw

[RoboChair]

Originally Posted by carpedav000

The only real hindrance would be the speed of your release mechanism. I was imagining a 2-speed gearbox with a set of gears taken out. Use the one remaining ratio to draw back and then shift to where the second ratio would be. #pneumaticquickrealeaseftw

We used a crossbow type trigger pulled by a motor. We could only fire once, then we used 2 pistons to release the surgical tubing bundles and had it tensioned to get pulled back up(which it fired against)

[Brandon Holley]

The real advantage to this system is it could be designed to block any other burglar attempt because it was already there, not necessarily that it would be pulled back so quickly. Shield the hole, shield the handles, and pull back in a reasonable amount of time and that thing could be unbeatable.

-Brando

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

The real advantage to this system is it could be designed to block any other burglar attempt because it was already there, not necessarily that it would be pulled back so quickly. Shield the hole, shield the handles, and pull back in a reasonable amount of time and that thing could be unbeatable.

-Brando

And it was

[JesseK]

I heard a rumor that Karthik mentioned de-ionized water and freezing motors in his Wednesday talk w.r.t. speeding up canburglars. Can anyone explain how this helps and what the process of it is? I vaguely remember something from the Minibot days as well, but it's a bit fuzzy.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I heard a rumor that Karthik mentioned de-ionized water and freezing motors in his Wednesday talk w.r.t. speeding up canburglars. Can anyone explain how this helps and what the process of it is? I vaguely remember something from the Minibot days as well, but it's a bit fuzzy.

Likely trying to decrease the resistance of the internal wiring of the motor? Think super conductor.