Week 2 Regionals: Veterans Still Have No Advantage

[meatmanek]

I don't think this game is 'dumbed down', as you say, and especially not because we're only allowed to handle one tube. This year's game provides quite a few different choices in effective arm and grabber design. You can use an articulated arm, a 4-bar linkage, a sliding elevator, a telescoping arm, and anything else your team can come up with. Grabber designs include pinch-type grabbers, curved pincers, two spatulas, wheel type, and grabbers that deal with the inside of the tube. Optimization and automation can be done with sensors and programming. In terms of ramps, I have seen many clever designs, including lifter types where the lifting robot does the work, cable driven ramp extensions, ramps where a robot driving up will extend the ramp, and so many others.

The focus this year is on tube handling and lifter design, rather than storing game pieces.