LIFT VS. LAUNCH

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

Pity. The "bucket brigade" scenario would have been fun to watch and would have rewarded technical proficiency and teamwork. Not that it is 100% impossible, as the "scoring robot" could pass the ball completely over the finish line to the receiving robot... or for the receiving robot to grip the part of the ball that has passed over the finish line while the ball is on the overpass... or for a robot to be built in such a way that it can pick up the ball on the counter-clockwise side of the overpass without first having to completely pass over the finish line (robot turns around, extends a bar from it's "front", backs across the line leaving the bar over the finish line, reaches up and grabs the ball, then retracts the bar and moves away from the overpass in a counter-clockwise direction) but the combination of G22 and having the finish line directly underneath the "counter clockwise" side of the overpass makes it even more difficult than it would have originally been.

Jason -
No need to be despondent. Keep that mental image in mind, but just make one minor adjustment. You started toward this scenario in your first message, but stopped short of fully developing it. Think about your "bucket brigade" of robots handing off the Trackball from one to the other by temporarily storing it atop the Overpass. But make the process faster. Rather than slowing down the process when the Trackball is stored on the Overpass, make Hurdling the part of the process with the highest-velocity Trackball movement. Rather than three well-coordinated, excellent "Super Lifters" you need three well-coordinated "Launcher/Catchers." Then your original scenario becomes:

Robot A is positioned on the far side of the finish line, ready to catch a Trackball.

Robot B approaches the near side of the Overpass, and launches the Trackball in a spectacular fashion. The Trackball describes a perfect parabolic arc over the Overpass as it heads toward Robot A (if you are thinking about this correctly, you should have a nice mental image of Max the dog in "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas," waiting outside the house for the Grinch to throw the massive bag of toys down to him from the rooftop after stealing them all from Whoville).

Robot C is doing a lap with a Trackball in possession.

Robot A catches the descending Trackball before it ever touches the ground in its whizz-bang-super-combination-Trackball-basket-and-catapult-launcher (it's a dessert topping! it's a floor wax!). The crowd goes wild! The Hurdle is complete, and the robot proceeds to do a lap.

Robot B crosses the Finish Line (completing a lap), and turns around - ready to catch the next Trackball as Robot C approaches and launches it.

Repeat until you win.


That is the ultimate "dream match" that I long to see. If not during the season, maybe we will see it at IRI.

-dave




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