An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?)

[archiver]

Posted by Kyle Huang.

Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Gunn High School and Sun Microsystems, Nasa/Ames and Xerox PARC.

Posted on 7/30/99 3:08 AM MST


In Reply to: Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?) posted by Dodd Stacy on 7/29/99 2:50 PM MST:



I don't know about every other team, but the floppies GRT recieved at kickoff were a lot softer than the ones
used in competition. By this I mean they were packed with fewer styrofoam packing peanuts. This effected
our robot construction process, because we initially had a mechanism to pick up floppies from the playing
field, instead of relying on the human player. The 'conveyor' was working, but at the last minute we found
out our robot was overweight and the conveyor had to be completely removed from our robot. The floppies
we got in the kit worked with the conveyor system, because the conveyor worked in such a way that it
could only pick up floppies that were pretty soft (ie not filled up completely). The floppies used in competition
would not have worked, and our conveyor system would have failed us. We ended up doing great without the
conveyor, however...

My point (or maybe it's a complaint) is that giving specs of game objects at any time doesn't necessarily
help out. in 1998, what if one of the balls hadn't been filled up correctly? It could cost a team valuable points.
The problem with that, is that there's almost no way to make sure everything is exactly the same... hundreds
of floppies/balls/inner tubes go out to teams across the country, then hundreds more are used in all the
regionals and in the nationals. How can FIRST make sure every floppy is filled up with the same amount of
peanuts, that every ball in competition is inflated perfeclty... I'm sure there are other little issues involved...

Anyways, just a thought that crossed my mind...