pic: Why 12 m/s is important.

[Kris Verdeyen]

It wasn't the practice that grinded them up, it was the prototyping. Some of our prototypes were based on meat grinder-style shooters.

[KenWittlief]

Oops! sorry about that! wrong setting

[DjAlamose]

Originally Posted by Kris Verdeyen

It wasn't the practice that grinded them up, it was the prototyping. Some of our prototypes were based on meat grinder-style shooters.

Meat grinder?? We did have the thought that we could rip the balls into small pieces and then shoot those into the goal so one ball would be 50! But then we read something about field damage...

[petek]

This begs the questions:
If a ball made it through the panel and is counted by the ball counter, does it still count for 3 points?
What if, while going through, it broke into multiple pieces? Would each piece count for 3 pts?

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by petek

If a ball made it through the panel and is counted by the ball counter, does it still count for 3 points?
What if, while going through, it broke into multiple pieces? Would each piece count for 3 pts?

(WARNING: Silly Post)

From a careful reading of the rules, if the ball goes through the counter at the bottom of the goal mechanism, it's 3 points. An obvious strategy that I haven't heard on this board yet is to lob the balls over the top of the face of the goal into the bin on top. I'm surprised, &c.

As for broken Poofs, I believe we hypothesized early in the build season that a fractional ball would have to retain the majority of the mass of the original ball to count.

[KenWittlief]

(warning: Silly^2 Post)

is there anything in the rules that says your robot cant tack a string to the ball

then toss it into the center goal, pull it back out

toss it back in, pull it back out....

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

?

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

(warning: Silly^2 Post)

is there anything in the rules that says your robot cant tack a string to the ball

then toss it into the center goal, pull it back out

toss it back in, pull it back out....

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

?

Warning: Silly Post ^3

Yes, there is a rule to prevent it: Rule <G05> "In order for a ball to score, it must enter the goal and exit via the exit chute. A ball that bounces out of the goal is not scored. Once a ball is scored for a particular ALLIANCE, it cannot score again until it is entered onto the field by the opposing ALLIANCE’s HUMAN PLAYER. " So unless the opposing human player pulls on the string to pull the ball out of the goal, you can't get away with it.

-dave

[petek]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

(warning: Silly^2 Post)

is there anything in the rules that says your robot cant tack a string to the ball

then toss it into the center goal, pull it back out

toss it back in, pull it back out....

DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!

?

Silly^4 Post
Not to mention entanglement!

[CmptrGk]

i think its sharpied.
when have you seen cracked plywood with incredibly defined lines where it broke. (not to mention the fact that the cracks are much darker than the plywood)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

From a careful reading of the rules, if the ball goes through the counter at the bottom of the goal mechanism, it's 3 points. An obvious strategy that I haven't heard on this board yet is to lob the balls over the top of the face of the goal into the bin on top.

Let's see--how about planting a small remote-control unit in each ball so you can navigate it through the chains and mesh blocking both top and back? Would that work?

[Jay H 237]

This is why we just can't have nice plywood practice field elements!


I noticed you seem to have decent room to set up practice field elements there. Is that part of your school or space at one of your sponsors?

[Kris Verdeyen]

We have built our robot for the last six years in the Light Manufacturing Facility, a collection of machine, wood, and sheet metal shops to which we have had varying amounts of access over our time there. It's adjacent to NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (you know, the big swimming pool) here in Houston. We're very lucky. Hopefully they'll let us come back next year.

Very few of our mentors work at the LMF, so a lot of times we get some strange looks when people show up to work at 6 on President's day, and find us there, bleary-eyed and hallucinating. Most of the people are pretty much used to us by now, though, and we do a pretty good job of cleaning up after we use their machines, so hopefully, we're just a mild annoyance.