Team Update 15 (2016)

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Madison

Our robot was designed with explicit features to guide the embedded pipe across the top of the machine. Thinner flaps make that design decision obsolete and puts our robot at risk of damaging the new flaps or, worse, being damaged by them.

My feelings exactly.

[tickspe15]

So the moral of the story is that if enough teams break the rules the rules will change.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by 3175student17

If bumper fabric really worked as well as I've heard it has, why not just use bumper fabric with red on the red side and blue on the blue side? Or is that too expensive/complicated for FIRST to add? IMO it would actually do more to lend itself to looking like defenses for an alliance that way.

"Bumper fabric" (cordura) is exactly what the low bar fabric was made of previously.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

"Bumper fabric" (cordura) is exactly what the low bar fabric was made of previously.

I'm not actually confident that is the case-- the drawings don't actually specify the material (or at least, I can't seem to find the specs), and in any case, there are a couple dozen varieties of Cordura out there, and some of them are MUCH stronger than others. In particular, the difference between different deniers of Cordura and the difference between "Classic" Cordura and "Ballistic" Cordura is extremely noticeable. While I didn't do a lot of touching the fabric on the low bar while doing field reset this past weekend, it did not feel like the type of Cordura that 2220 or 2667 have used or are using for bumpers. Also worth noting is that "bumper fabric" is a pretty terrible specification-- I've seen teams use everything from sailcloth to pleather for bumpers.

[JohnFogarty]

Just when I thought competing this week couldn't get any more exciting. We get to be FIRST's ginuea pigs a second time.

[Jared Russell]

I'm curious as to the durability of one continuous flap of vinyl vs. 5 separate flaps. The former option would certainly have been better for low bar teams, even if the hanging pipe had to go.

The top of your robot is the logical place to put cameras, LEDs, ball shooting mechanism cables, and other delicate things that teams generally want to protect (and in most cases, had planned to protect by ensuring the hanging pipe hit something else first). Maybe it won't be that bad, but I would not be surprised if someone were to be screwed by this over the weekend...

It could be worse. They could be replacing the portcullis:

[pandamonium]

If this gets stuck in a robot is that not a field fault? We were not told to design around it.

Removing the flap and making sure boulders can only be brought over defenses by robots is the way to go.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

"Bumper fabric" (cordura) is exactly what the low bar fabric was made of previously.

I can't speak to exactly what kind of material the low bar fabric is, but I can say that when we replaced the stock fabric with what I know is cordura, the rips stopped occuring. Regardless, the low bar fabric is not as durable as it should be.

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

"Bumper fabric" (cordura) is exactly what the low bar fabric was made of previously.

Ours were straight up shoe leather in 2010.

[Taylor]

Not sure how the referees are supposed to determine intent with regard to the human player. To my eyes, this is setting up unnecessary confrontations between drive teams and referees.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Okay, so if the flap solution somehow results in less permanently damaged low bars, HQ is presumably going to consider it a success, unless they're otherwise notified.

I'm assuming teams that end up eating flaps or have flaps break things are going to be less satisfied with this solution. How loudly are we going to complain and what are we going to ask for? Options would seem to be:

1. Removal of low bar "fabric" entirely and enforcement of boulder rules
2. Yet another fabric solution, but more in line with the original
3. Some amount of unbag time to let teams deal with a major design requirement change in the middle of competition season.

I can turn this into a separate poll if that seems more useful.

[Jessica Boucher]

I'm a fan. FIRST iterates, and so should you.

[Chris is me]

If they are going to hand out tech fouls for human player behavior, can they at least make it a rule?

Otherwise, as long as this new low bar doesn't impede teams that would be fine with the other one, it's a great change. But I'm concerned the little dangling strips will get stuck in robots that would never have damaged the cloth covering + pipe. I don't know why a tougher fabric + pipe solution was untenable.

[GeeTwo]

Hmmm.. Q926 is still in a pending state, but the new R77g makes the answer obvious.

Add 3946 to the "side rails" club. We have tried to keep things tight enough to repel 10" boulders from our innards, but we may have to tighten up some more to repel 8" vinyl strips. Fortunately, we have some similar strips under the chassis workbench so we can do some testing this week.

[EricLeifermann]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

I'm a fan. FIRST iterates, and so should you.

Except teams iterate to get better. FIRST just iterated the wrong direction.

They should have spoken with the week 1 comps and seen what worked the best and gone with one of those.

IMHO Lake Superior had the best solution and that is what should have been implemented. This seems like FIRST choosing something else because it was their idea and not someone elses.