How would you have built your team's robot differently if the robot could expand?

[Chris is me]

In Lunacy, the robot must not expand past the size limits nor break the Bumper Perimeter this year. If both of these rules were done away with, what designs would you see this year that we didn't?

Keep in mind no de scoring!

[AcesJames]

I think we would see a lot of designs like that of Team 148, but with a wider dumper in the front. 148 had a perfect design for doing what they wanted to do. Their system was flawless, and their bot could hold enough moon rocks to fill an entire trailer. If they had managed to have a bit wider bot, they could have made an elevator capable of dumping multiple balls at a time, which would have allowed for faster dumping, which I think was the only down-side to their design, and many similar designs as well. The more balls you carry, the longer it takes to get rid of them, and to pick them up, if you're doing so one by one.

[delsaner]

I am not sure if this idea breaks another rule, but thought of the idea of latching on to another robots trailer. This way, the trailer is in front of you at all times. It seems kind of mean to latch on to another trailer, which could mess them up with their driving, but it would be really effective.

[Josh Drake]

That's an easy one... Put a cover over the trailer. Wouldn't be very interesting of a game though, unless other robots tried to take the cover off and score...

[Alex Dinsmoor]

Along with the other modifications, a system to extend a ball pickup system so a robot could reach out to grab balls from around the robot. Then you don't have to allign perfectly with the balls.

[CSideris28]

You would see lots of robots with expanding hoppers, or imitations of RAGE from 2002.

[delsaner]

Another idea would be to place two semi circles on the left and right side of the shooting mechanism. That way, missed moon rocks can be recycled back into the shooting mechanism.

[FRC4ME]

339 can easily answer that question, since we spent our first 4-5 hours of strategy discussion after Kickoff without understanding that we had to stay within the bumper perimeter.

Things we would have done:
-Cover over the trailer
-Two rotating scoopers to direct moon rocks into pickup area
-Deployable chute to direct balls into opponent's trailer

[Molten]

I wouldn't. It would be too dangerous to reach out, even if you were aloud. That is why the rules were in place, so we wouldn't end up with a bunch of broken bots. That rule wasn't there to constrain, it was there to protect. One of the better rules for this year, if you ask me.

[BradMello]

A trebuchet scoring device

[NorviewsVeteran]

GAAA 20-20 Hindsight!

[NickE]

Originally Posted by AcesJames

I think we would see a lot of designs like that of Team 148, but with a wider dumper in the front. 148 had a perfect design for doing what they wanted to do. Their system was flawless, and their bot could hold enough moon rocks to fill an entire trailer. If they had managed to have a bit wider bot, they could have made an elevator capable of dumping multiple balls at a time, which would have allowed for faster dumping, which I think was the only down-side to their design, and many similar designs as well. The more balls you carry, the longer it takes to get rid of them, and to pick them up, if you're doing so one by one.

The rules did not really limit the ability to create a wider dumper (we did it), and 148 could have built one within the current rules if they wanted to. I would suspect that they did not due to possible issues with funneling at the top while directing the balls into the top of the helix.

[Ice Berg]

Initially I really disliked the fact that we couldn't leave dimensions, but looking back, its definitely an important thing to be able to design to. Something we decided at the end of last season was that we would try to keep our robots from extending past the drive base as much as possible. This really cuts down on damages. In the end I don't think I would change anything. This does not apply to all years, but I think that this year, not being able to leave dimensions was really not that much of a problem.

[bobwrit]

Easy, have a basket just about the maximum starting config, Place a hinge on the upper forward edge along with a CIM, And have a dumper.

[nahstobor]

More lucky Clamps! We had this one lucky racing clamp on our robot for the New Jersey and VCU regional, but it seems it ran out when we got to Atlanta.

Honestly I wouldn't change anything about the 612 robot, just strategy. I wish we started human loading more before Saturday in Atlanta. Also I wish we wrote a Automode to human load rather than trying to fix our tracking Auto which broke after New Jersey, we tried in our last match but the turning value was off by a half a second but we were just guessing numbers before we did it.