Designs that would never work...

[Wetzel]

Every year our team discounts something as impossible to do. Then I see some team that pulled it off.

Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity.

Wetzel

[n0cturnalxb]

Tentacled robot? Have it load all of its (9, I would think) arms up with tetras, move to the middle, and then just sit and wait until the match is almost over. Then, unload all 9 arms, one tetra for each goal.

You get.. what.. 80 points minimum from all that?

[geeknerd99]

We somehow ended up spending half an hour trying to tell a teammate that building an unfolding, 27-foot wide wall robot would be bad strategically (no offensive capabilities) and would weigh at least half a ton if built with enough strength to stop other bots from going across it.

After our kickoff meeting was over, he was still trying to convince people that a wall was the best place to go...

[Cyberguy34000]

Hey would someone check this out in the rules? I didn't see anything that would actually disqualify this robot but I wouldn't want to be the team building it. Seeing as to how it make the team that built it the scourge of the computation.

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Bed Sheet Bot

This robot would pretty much have one goal. It would make its way to the enemy control station, and then unfold, and expand its full size curtain over the enemy station, blocking their entire view, and rendering the enemy alliance helpless.

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It would defiantly go against gracious professionalism. But would it be legal?

[sojouner06]

the perfect robot would be one that is effecient, fast, BUT MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: SIMPLE!!!!!!!!!

[NoodleKnight]

nerf bot
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it's something I've ALWAYS wanted to do, first off, you can probably cram the thing into a small box and mail it for a cheap price. It doesn't hurt if it backs into your shins or falls on your feet. Lightweight. You can scare people by throwing it at them. Disadvantage? It more than likely won't work.

How about a robot that eats other robots?

[russell]

you notice theres a rule that says you cannot use a grabber to rip out wire or hoses. There is another rule that says you may not put something under another robot then lift it up. So what you do is you build a wedge shaped robot that drives under other robots and lifts them up, without actually lifting. Then you have a little probes that plug into their programming port, then you reprogram their robot to drive around autonomously and put your color tetras on all the goals. Its like the borg from startrek. And as far as I can tell its actually legal.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by russell

you notice theres a rule that says you cannot use a grabber to rip out wire or hoses. There is another rule that says you may not put something under another robot then lift it up. So what you do is you build a wedge shaped robot that drives under other robots and lifts them up, without actually lifting. Then you have a little probes that plug into their programming port, then you reprogram their robot to drive around autonomously and put your color tetras on all the goals. Its like the borg from startrek. And as far as I can tell its actually legal.

The rules also never explicitly say that I can't park a Boeing 747 right in the middle of the play field and use it as an obstacle for the other alliance. But after a little thought, something tells me that I probably should not do it.

Every now and then, the judicious application of a modicum of common sense can make all the difference in the world.

-dave

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by dlavery

The rules also never explicitly say that I can't park a Boeing 747 right in the middle of the play field and use it as an obstacle for the other alliance.

Oh, come on, Dave... there's no way you're gonna fold that 747 into a 28x38x60 box.

[Anchi]

he he you guys are nuts.

last year my 1st idea was to make a expanding net that cough all the balls when they dropped. i was told it to be imposable, yet surely enuf there was a team that could catch and dispense every last one of them

[robolemur1236]

lets see...

you can have a giant conveyer-belt bot that can load up every last tetra from human and auto stations, then pulls arms out of the ether to drop them on goals

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a bot that climbs the player station, shoots a zipline to the other side of the field, then traverses that line back and forth to drop tetras?

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arr, weight limits

[Twstdkittie]

Originally Posted by robolemur1236

lets see...

you can have a giant conveyer-belt bot that can load up every last tetra from human and auto stations, then pulls arms out of the ether to drop them on goals

----

a bot that climbs the player station, shoots a zipline to the other side of the field, then traverses that line back and forth to drop tetras?

----

arr, weight limits

Mm.... zipline... Hehehehe.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by Anchi

he he you guys are nuts.

last year my 1st idea was to make a expanding net that cough all the balls when they dropped. i was told it to be imposable, yet surely enuf there was a team that could catch and dispense every last one of them

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by Katie Reynolds

hey we did that exact thing for 1403, and we capped the 2x ball too, not to mention we were good at it. Looking back at it i'm suprised not many teams did because if they put together a scoring matrix, they'd see it was the obvious choice


also another rejected design from this year on our team, you have this inflatable ballon, powered through pneumatics that went into the tetra, and inflated to lift it up.

another one rejected by the team, even though it wasn't as bad as the balloon. You have some muscle wire (it becomes stiff when you put an electrical current through it) and use that to grasp a tetra. It was feasable yet ineffecient because of the current draw it would require.

[Kate00]

We spent one whole meeting designing a robot with a "bowl" that would sit just over the centre tetra, keeping others from capping it. It would be attached to our robot by a string, and we would be able to drive around the goal and ward off other robots. Then we realised that it wouldn't do anything for us if the centre goal wasn't capped first, and it would be boring.

We were going to steal the bowl from the cafeteria.