pic: How high can u jump?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by JVN

I'm curious to see more, specifically how it relates to this:
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=11225

-John

If <R06> rules this out, I'll eat my hat. The gyro is applying a moment to the robot, not a force. The net downward force of the robot has to stay the same, as long as all 4 wheels are on the ground. If the gyro actually causes the robot to pop a wheelie as seen in the video, then that could be an infraction. Maybe. There's arguably an increase in normal force when the CoM accelerates upwards, and when the robot ultimately falls down again.

The mechanism obviously isn't designed with this in mind, however, so you can't declare it illegal, per the GDC's recent ruling about mechanisms that have the potential to exceed the starting size of the robot. At worst, the refs would call a penalty whenever the robot popped a wheelie. At which point, you'd have to penalize every robot that ever popped a wheelie from running into a wall, another robot, etc., etc. Which is ludicrous, to my mind.

Granted, I'm not the GDC, and they've been making some pretty difficult to enforce rulings lately in the name of applying rules universally and with excessive consistency... So I'll be on the lookout for good hat recipes, just in case.