Lights, Bumpers

[archiver]

Posted by Kyle.

Student on team #192, Gunn Robotics Team, from Gunn High School and Sun Microsystems, Xerox PARC, and Nortel Networks.

Posted on 1/9/2000 1:21 AM MST



Correct me if I have any of this wrong:
The light must be within the size limitations of the robot, and counts towards the final weight of the robot.
The bumper does not have to be within the size limitations of the robot, but DOES count towards the final weight of the robot.
The weight restriction is the same as last year

Lights
Having this giant light to identify which team a robot is on is useless in my
mind. For me, it is not difficult at all to tell which bots are on which team,
but I'm sure the same does not go for everybody. But making us fit the light
into our size and weight restrictions is a lot to ask. In 1999, our robot was
very close to being overweight. I don't know if any other teams had that
problem, but adding a light on could throw a team overweight, and disqualify
them from the entire competition. Is a light really that important? The same
goes with the size restricion. The light is not small. Adding an extra foot to
the height restriction may help this aspect, but it still does not solve
anything. Since the weight restricion is the same, having a bigger robot
plus an extra light and bumpers will only make it harder to meet the weight
limit. Paper identification cards is one thing. I'm sure in some extreme case,
they could send a robot overweight, but that's cutting it pretty close.

Bumpers
Having bumpers may be a good idea. It can decrease the damage done to
robots when there is interaction. Including them in the weight limit may be
a good idea too, because a team could simply use solid steel bumpers.
But can we get an idea of how many teams will be using some kind of
bumper? What if 50% don't... Will that mean anything?

Anyways, I don't like lights or bumpers. Can we use the light as a bumper? =)