2011 FRC Game Hint #2

Originally Posted by TheoBlacksmith

I was being sarcastic ..... -_-

Oh. Sorry. I'm a literalist.

[Mike Schreiber]

Originally Posted by TheoBlacksmith

Since the beginnings of civilisation man has had a fascination for a human-like creation that would assist him. Societies in the early part of the first millennium engaged in slavery and used those slaves to perform the tasks which were either dirty or menial labours. Having slaves freed the enslavers to carry on their society and concentrate on what they perceived as more important tasks such as business and politics. Man had discovered mechanics and the means of creating complex mechanisms which would perform repetitive functions such as waterwheels and pumps. Technological advances were slow but there were more complex machines, generally limited to a very small number, which performed more grandiose functions such as those invented by Hero of Alexandria.
In the first half of the second millennium man began to develop more complex machines as well as rediscovering the Greek engineering methods. Men such as Leonardo Da Vinci in 1495 through to Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739 have made plans for, and built, automata and robots leading to books of designs such as the Japanese Karakuri zui (Illustrated Machinery) in 1796. As mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age we find more practical applications such as Nikola Tesla in 1898 who designed a radio-controlled torpedo and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation creation Televox in 1926. From here we find a more android development as designers tried to mimic more human-like features including designs such as those of biologist Makoto Nishimura in 1929 and his creation Gakutensoku, which cried and changed its facial expressions, and the more crude Elektro from Westinghouse in 1938.
Electronics now became the driving force of development instead of mechanics with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol, England in 1948. The first digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was ultimately called the Unimate. Devol sold the first Unimate to General Motors in 1960 where it was used to lift pieces of hot metal from die casting machines in a plant in Trenton, New Jersey.
Since then we have seen robots finally reach a more true assimilation of all technologies to produce robots such as ASIMO which can walk and move like a human. Robots have replaced slaves in the assistance of performing those repetitive and dangerous tasks which humans prefer not to do or unable to do due to size limitations or even those such as in outer space or at the bottom of the sea where humans could not survive the extreme environments.
Robots come in those two basic forms: Those which are used to make or move things, such as Industrial robots or mobile or servicing robots and those which are used for research into human-like robots such as ASIMO and TOPIO as well as those into more defined and specific roles such as Nano robots and Swarm robots.
Man has developed a fear of the autonomous robot and how it may react in society, such as Shelley's Frankenstein and the EATR, and yet we still use robots in a wide variety of tasks such as vacuuming floors, mowing lawns, cleaning drains, investigating other planets, building cars, entertainment and in warfare.

Word for word from the geniuses at Wikipedia.

[buildmaster5000]

Going on the train idea...

If the endgame bonus is to couple all the robots together in a train (ramps are not allowed) and before that, we are doing something that has a fairly high speed. Overdrive with some other stuff is roughly the idea.

[TheoBlacksmith]

well at least i can count to 20. take That!

Originally Posted by buildmaster5000

Going on the train idea...

If the endgame bonus is to couple all the robots together in a train (ramps are not allowed) and before that, we are doing something that has a fairly high speed. Overdrive with some other stuff is roughly the idea.

Well it is supposably a mix of different games!

[TheoBlacksmith]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

Well it is supposably a mix of different games!

Originally Posted by buildmaster5000

Going on the train idea...

If the endgame bonus is to couple all the robots together in a train (ramps are not allowed) and before that, we are doing something that has a fairly high speed. Overdrive with some other stuff is roughly the idea.

I defenitly agree with the train idea. but i think it will be more than an endgame bonus points

Originally Posted by TheoBlacksmith

I defenitly agree with the train idea. but i think it will be more than an endgame bonus points

I just don't want the robots connected as a train. That takes away the possibility of tank-drive!

[iblis432]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

They could leave it to the teams to figure out--innovate in.

Hmm, if this was the case on the idea of connecting robots together like a train, wouldn't the logical conclusion for most teams be to build a train hitch (the piece connecting the cars that look almost like a hand shake, to me anyway) and then get as many other teams as possible to consider the idea?

[TheoBlacksmith]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I just don't want the robots connected as a train. That takes away the possibility of tank-drive!

i donot think that the robots will be linked together. mainly because if one robot has a disfunctional linker then the whole alliance is comprimised. also i think that it will be like pulling and pushing "cargo loaded" train cars around on tracks.

[TheoBlacksmith]

Just came up with this qoute now!

Originally Posted by TheoBlacksmith

i donot think that the robots will be linked together. mainly because if one robot has a disfunctional linker then the whole alliance is comprimised. also i think that it will be like pulling and pushing "cargo loaded" train cars around on tracks.

That's reassuring! Our team relies on tank-drive!

[iblis432]

say... back to the idea of taking things away, couldn't it be that the thing taken away is individuality? Before, it was suggested that you work with your alliance partner, but not really required, it was possible to win when your partner did not show up. But what if that was taken away? What if it was a train, on a track, the leader would be chosen at random, and the others have mechanisms that do the rest of the game. Such as activate turntables and such, or maybe have like ball cannons to fire into a center goal. The idea is, all three teams (or two) on an alliance have to work in perfect unison, or else it's all lost. In the case a robot does not come to the field, a blank board with the specificed track wheels is put in its place, and a different leader is chosen.

Don't imagine what I'm saying to be exact, I'm saying something similar could happen

[TheoBlacksmith]

of course we could be completly wrong and this has nothing to do with trains

Originally Posted by iblis432

say... back to the idea of taking things away, couldn't it be that the thing taken away is individuality? Before, it was suggested that you work with your alliance partner, but not really required, it was possible to win when your partner did not show up. But what if that was taken away? What if it was a train, on a track, the leader would be chosen at random, and the others have mechanisms that do the rest of the game. Such as activate turntables and such, or maybe have like ball cannons to fire into a center goal. The idea is, all three teams (or two) on an alliance have to work in perfect unison, or else it's all lost. In the case a robot does not come to the field, a blank board with the specificed track wheels is put in its place, and a different leader is chosen.

Don't imagine what I'm saying to be exact, I'm saying something similar could happen

That would be interesting, but extremely hard, and there would be no way to go against another team, because you'd have to be on separate tracks, othwise you'd collide.

[ThirteenOfTwo]

Some friends and I were talking over the game hints and we came up with the following idea: we think that hint one has been over-interpreted. The only commonality between the pictures is a link to a white, round object (the triangles to the circle in the FRC Logo/Little Eva to the pillar).

Our hypothesis is that each team will be linked to one immovable, white, round object in a zone of the field, one red robot and one blue robot per object.

Remember that in the past FRC has been trying to make it a good idea to have robots that don't try to do everything at once. By placing a physical limitation on where a robot can go, they would be strongly encouraging teams to specialize in one particular area on the field.