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#16
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Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?)
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... |
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#17
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Balls!
Posted by Dodd Stacy.
Engineer on team #95, Lebanon Robotics Team, from Lebanon High School and CRREL/CREARE. Posted on 7/30/99 9:53 AM MST In Reply to: Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?) posted by Kyle Huang on 7/30/99 3:08 AM MST: : : '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...' Kyle, Your experience with the floppies is a case in point. If we had all made or purchased a dozen or so floppies ahead of time and 'played' with them, we would have found out how much volume variation there can be in a fixed weight of styrofoam peanuts, and how much the peanuts would compress/degrade with some physical abuse. Last year, the balls demoed at Kickoff wedged very firmly between the ladder rails. Once stuffed, they were virtually impossible to dislodge by hitting, pushing, or poking. When we received the 10 or 12 balls we ordered and inflated them to the specified pressure, we found the diameters to vary by +/- 2' in that small sample! All were loose in the rails - some dropped through under their own weight! We found that the shapes were highly variable, from spherical to egg-shaped. We also found that the weights were quite variable, and that the shape stiffness was variable at the same inflation pressure. FIRST ultimately refined the spec to include both an inflation pressure range AND a diameter range. By that time, we had already committed to a strategy based on wedging the balls and developed the manipulator to do that. It was slow, but worked killer with the big, hard demo kit pressure spec ball. With the final spec, the wedged balls were easy for the opponents to knock out of the ladder, and our offensive strategy was thus easily defeated by a quick opponent. I believe that, had we all gotten the balls early, we would have collectively surfaced these issues and resolved them with FIRST well before the design/build/develop crunch. At the very least, we would have been able to quantify the variations in a typical sample of the game objects and to develop manipulator concepts that were sufficiently tolerant of those variations. Dodd : |
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#18
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Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?)
Posted by Jon.
Engineer on team #190, Gompei, from Mass Academy of Math and Science and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Posted on 7/30/99 12:45 PM 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: regarding #3... it would be nice if the balls/tubes/floppies were easier to make standard so little things like the ball pressure don't screw up carefully designed manipulators. frankly i would be impressed if FIRST knew that people would be able to throw the balls through the rails in 98! I certainly didn't see that one coming... |
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#19
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Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?)
Posted by Raul.
Engineer on team #111, Wildstang, from Rolling Meadows & Wheeling HS and Motorola. Posted on 7/30/99 1:57 PM MST In Reply to: Re: An idea for the 2000 games..(is six weeks enough?) posted by Jon on 7/30/99 12:45 PM MST: : regarding #3... it would be nice if the balls/tubes/floppies were easier to make standard so little things like the ball pressure don't screw up carefully designed manipulators. frankly i would be impressed if FIRST knew that people would be able to throw the balls through the rails in 98! I certainly didn't see that one coming... Actually, I recall that at the kickoff they said they would change the spec to allow that to happen. And indeed they reduced the size of the balls after that. Raul |
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