Pre-event scouting--IRI

[pwnageNick]

Well, if you want to call out my team's design as ineffective, I'll go ahead and address those points.

1. The mechanism is effective (I assumed "effective vacuum" meant "the vacuum controlled balls well"). Here's a picture of the robot holding the ball.

2. At WPI we were not at top form by any stretch, so I generally consider Connecticut performance to be indicative of my team's robot's true strength. At CT, our team's alliances averaged 6.3 goals per match, not counting a few missed DOGMA goals in the semis. We played opponents roughly as tough as you guys (177, 1124, 694, 175, 383, 1501 vs 16, 1732, 1625, 111, 71, 2949).

3. There are many, many, many effective vacuum robots in FRC. 78 was the #2 seed on Galileo and was just inches away from winning GSR. 20 (vac not shown) won WPI with one that they ultimately replaced, and they helped 2791 with their vacuum design. 25 had by far the best vacuum of 2010, as it could grab balls from more than 6 inches away due to some magic I hope to understand someday. 571 wasn't particularly effective on field due to a lot of bad luck, but they had a quality vacuum and had the gracious professionalism to give a unit to 2791 as an upgrade for CT when we had an unfortunate malfunction. There are many, many vacuums in FIRST that are both effective in function, and mounted on robots that are effective in competition. Did you know that 25 lost only one match until the Championship?

Also, just a fair warning. Your anti-469 strategy will get you a Yellow Card your first match and disqualify you every other match (Pro Tip: Two Yellow Cards = 1 Red Card). You guys have an effective robot otherwise, so I would focus on doing what you do well rather than breaking the rules and calling out other teams.

First off, I was not looking to call out your team Chris. From what I've seen your team looks pretty awesome and I hope that some day our teams will meet (although we are somewhat far away from eachother). Some one presented me with an argument with your team as proof so I compared our teams. It was nothing against your team at all.

And a question, only because I did not attend Atlanta, though I don't know if you did, but how many of the teams that you mentioned did not end up switching to a backroller/pinchroller?

And finally as far as the 469 topic goes, I wan't saying it would be used every match, but if really needed, it is indeed possible with our robot. I was just throwing it out there purely because there are not many other teams who even have a chance of blocking them.

PS- Thank you for calling our robot an "effective robot". That's very appreciated. I would say that your's is too.