No-show teams and trailers

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Make a note of that. If you want a question answered, then ask it 9 times on the official FIRST forums, & start a thread that has at least 64 replies here.

'bout time! Good thing I really started paying attention to this thread yesterday & they used a truely simple idea that could have been answered weeks ago.

Could of been a frustrating wait if that wasn't the case... </sarcasm>

I think that the GDC has been focusing on answering robot design questions first, since those are of immediate importance to a lot of teams. The answer to this question shouldn't affect many (any?) designs.

[Taylor]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

You better hope your teammates are showing up every match, because its going to be terribly difficult to win a 3 v. 2 matchup.

With the threat of a <G14> hanging over their heads, I doubt the alliance of 3 will be terrorizing the empty trailer. I have the feeling that games will be both higher-scoring and closer than we think now, especially in the later regionals.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Taylor

With the threat of a <G14> hanging over their heads, I doubt the alliance of 3 will be terrorizing the empty trailer. I have the feeling that games will be both higher-scoring and closer than we think now, especially in the later regionals.

I totally agree with that statement.

I still feel as the control of the match will be totally in the hands of the 3 team alliance.

Control meaning, if they want to score, they can score at will...

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

You better help your teammates show up every match.....

fixed quote

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by squirrel

fixed quote

hahaha perfect, thank you squirrel

[Rick Wagner]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Which of the two robots in your alliance has the task of pushing the no-show trailer away from the other alliance's PS?

My team has been discussing this and we plan to have autonomous modes for this task. It will be best to place the missing robot at the outpost and then autonomously sweep the trailer into the friendly corner.

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

You didn't see the anti- Speed Racer definition this year? 1519 should be proud of having a section of this year's manual dedicated to last year's efforts.

Thanks for remembering Speed Racer! I don't know whether or not the GDC added that definition to try to prevent our dual-configuration robot from last year. However, I don't think the new "robot definition rule" would prohibit the dual-configuration robot design that we brought to the Granite State Regional last year.

The dual-configuration robot was prohibited on the basis of the fact that our dual-configuration robot had two different "basic robot structures," which still isn't explicitly prohibited in this year's rule.

In any case, we're glad to have gone down the path of the dual-configuration robot. Even though the GDC outlawed the dual-configuration robot, during the offseason we separated the dual-config robot into two separate robots, which permitted us to undo the many compromises that we had to take in order to make the "dual-config robot" a reality. In particular, we were able to add additional drive motors to the hurdling configuration, increase the frame strength of our speed racer configuration to better withstand high-speed impacts with walls, increase the number of frame gussets and other reinforcements on both configurations, and make a new electronics board for speed racer which didn't have to lug around the victors and other wiring needed for the more complicated hurdling configuration. After removing the compromises we introduced for the dual-configuration robot, the resulting two different robots each ended up leading tournament-winning alliances at off-season events. We'll fondly remember both Fezzik and Speed Racer.

[lproxster]

I think Bill's blog covered this topic a while ago.