Should FIRST address "ramp bots"?

[DougHogg]

There are also disadvantages to wedges.

We put wedges on the sides of our robot so that when we were trying to cap, opponents would have trouble tipping us or shoving us around. However in the Archimedes quarter finals, our wedges worked against us. We were defending a goal that we owned and pushed into a robot to stop them from capping. Unfortunately we tipped the opponent and our alliance was dq'ed (disqualified). That happened to us twice in the same quarter final! However one of the opponents was also dq'ed for tipping in one of the matches making it a tie (both alliances dq'ed). We finally won the quarter-final, but, needless to say, being dq'ed twice in one quarter final didn't make our day.

The Archimedes referees were very strict about tipping if a robot had a wedge, and they didn't seem to have any trouble making a ruling. In our case, we were moving forward with a wedge, the opponent tipped, and we were dq'ed. I don't have any disagreement with their ruling. My point is that having a wedge is helpful when being pushed but obviously not helpful when you are doing the pushing and it gets you dq'ed.

On the positive side, this year, we saw some robots come at us so quickly that they caught some air when they hit our rear wedge and flew over us. We were happy that our robot didn't have to deal with the collisions that would have occurred if we hadn't had wedges.

I do think that the rules on pushing with a wedge need to be clearly spelled out (ie if you push with a wedge and a robot tips, you will be dq'ed) as the rules were applied very differently at different events.

Doug Hogg