Robot in 3 Days 2017

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by EricH

I would be highly interested in a little challenge. I don't know if it can be pulled off, but...

Any Ri3D robots that remain functional (and give-or-take unmodified--modify to be "legal", for a given offseason's value of "legal", but without further iteration) get entered into one or more offseason events, either as pre-rookie robots or as second robots or as "house" robots.

I think you can see where this is going...

The challenge is to see how an Ri3D robot would end up in a competition environment. Obviously it wouldn't be a good idea to do that at an official competition event, but at an offseason you can get away with a lot of stuff. If they all end up at the bottom of the stack, then there's a pretty good argument that they're not as "upsetting the system" as anybody thinks. If they end up at the top, then the argument goes the other way. My guess is they'll end up in the middle: above the BLT-types and below the iterated robots.

The GreenHorns have actually done this the past two years. We've worked with 4607 to bring our Ri3D robot to a pre-rookie team. The pre-rookie team works with 4607 to build bumpers for the robot which gives the team great experience. After the bumpers are made, our robot has been entered in a couple of the Minnesota offseason events including the Minnesota Robotics Invitational (MRI) and Minne Mini.

The rookie team then competes with our Ri3D robot while learning to scout, market their team, etc. from 4607. Considering the robot is controlled by a pre-rookie team that doesn't fully understand the game, that may skew the results slightly, but our robots have been low to middle of the pack in each event.

I would think if the robot were controlled by somebody with a decent amount of drive practice and an understanding of the game, it would be a late pick at most events.