Pinning Long Robots

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Brad Voracek

Heh, true. Well the pinning motion I believe is being described here, after watching san diego, is where a wide robot gets inbetween your trailer and the back of your robot. The initial reaction would be to try and "turn away" (to the right in the shown picture) or drive straight to get into it. But you would want to turn left, pushing your trailer into them, allowing you to eventually speed out of it. I also believe letting go of the sticks completely will help, because if your opponent ever stops accelerating you will be let free, and will have to accelerate at that point. Then again whoever is pushing you should never let go.

I meant getting hit in the middle of the regolith.

Bingo.
here is my take on it. For the record we have a crab drive and do a slightly different manuever, but essentially this works .
If you try to turn away from the attacking bot, the trailer wedges against theirs. At this point you trying to turn your bot (highest energy action), your trailer and their bot. Meanwhile your opponent is just trying to drive you sideways. The appearance on the field is a magic hit and then you get pushed across the field into a wall.

If you turn into their bot, your forces are opposing theirs which keeps you in place (center of regolith). It also causes your bot to rotate around theirs, and theirs to rotate about yours. As the speed of rotation increase, you will slip away (unless they are way faster), and your trailer will swing around the front of their bot and break loose.

Check out early 33 videos for what not to do, and then the last qualification match (towards the end) for a into the skid example.


Now the downside of this manuever is it exposes your trailer to the front (business end) of most robots. This will often result in a ball or two in your trailer, but that is better then the pinned and filled routine.

This principle also explains why it is so hard to turn off of the wall.