Footage of 179 in match/balancing

Does anyone have footage of 179 in a match and/or balancing? They've been a team everyone has been watching since their robot unveil, and since I didn't get to watch Orlando, I couldn't see them.

[AlexD744]

I do not believe that 179 had a successful "hang" this past weekend, although there were a few attempts. They were a team that was constantly working on improving their robot and working towards getting the hanging to work. From what I saw, whenever they weren't in a match they were working on the practice field. However, that aside, comments from our survey team included that they were the fastest robot on the field, and a reliable middle scorer. Watch for them in week 5 at the SoFlo Regional, if they get that working it will completely change the dynamics.

[StAxis]

They were only able to try to use it twice, the back sagged off and hit the ground both times so neither counted for balancing. They never got to try a triple in eliminations though. I hope they get the issues worked out for south florida, then they will be killer!

[MattC9]

Now is the 179 hang legal? Because I know they told 118 their hang was illegal.

[Randomness]

Originally Posted by MattC9

Now is the 179 hang legal? Because I know they told 118 their hang was illegal.

Yes - 179 is legal, as it only touches the top of the bridge, (so they don't grab, grasp, or grapple,) even though the main portion of their robot is underneath the bridge. 118 applied pressure to two sides of the bridge flange, which violated the grab/grasp/grapple rule.

You can see some pretty good pictures here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=101676

[slijin]

Originally Posted by MattC9

Now is the 179 hang legal? Because I know they told 118 their hang was illegal.

118's hanger was ruled illegal as it was deemed to be "grappling" on the bridge. A specific definition was posted in the relevant thread, seen here:

Originally Posted by Justin Ridley

The head ref at Alamo approached our team prior to opening ceremonies on Friday. He told us that a telecon was held last night amongst the GDC and they determined our robot’s mechanism fell under their definition of the word “grapple” when interacting with the bridge. It would therefore be a violation of [G10] when used, and be penalized accordingly. We were told it was not the GDC’s intention that teams utilize the features at the edge of the bridge to hang or lift off of during a balance.

During a break in matches at the beginning of the day, the head ref explained this ruling to the crowd. During this he read the following definition for Grapple: “The use of a tool to catch, hold, or rake to gain a physical/mechanical advantage”.

In our conversations with the head ref he expanded on this definition, talking about devices which react against multiple surfaces to create a moment or torque.

179's hanger is designed such that, when functional, they will be wholly supported by the bridge from above. My personal opinion is that their hanger falls into neither the grabbing, grasping, grappling, nor attaching category (listed under [G10]) and is therefore legal. However, if what Alex said is true and 179 never successfully hung from a bridge, then we will likely only see a ruling at SFR.

That being said, in the event that 179's hanger is deemed illegal, grasping seems like the least likely of the 4 grounds on which to rule it illegal.

[Swampdude]

We were told Thursday our method of hanging was deemed legal by the GDC from the head ref. They were excited about seeing it work as were we. When we added the strain gauges, we kept pulling on the channel shape I think we over worked the upper weld joint. Then we hung it from a piece of box tube in our pit that deflected and stressed the end joints of the upper plate and cracked the weld a bit (about 3" in on each end). So then we went to the practice field and hung on a real competition bridge and it worked at first but then the plastic on the bridge just drooped an inch! The upper plate ends of our hanging channel were deflecting about 1/4" but the plastic on the bridge between the supporting angle piece to our plate was approx a 30 deg angle! Never expected that... So after seeing that we added spacers to get up higher which worked but only made the plastic deflect even more. So it's like doing a pull-up on a rubber bar.

We did try it in one match but it never got off the ground and we weren't on all the way (which is key to it working) the team ended up driving off the end of the ramp. Can't remember the team number, but thank you for trying it with us.

So we didn't want to use it again Friday unless we had a fix. Saturday we put brackets on the end that wouldn't deflect and shorten the distance between the bridge angle and the bot. Worked great on the practice field, but we only had the last match of quals to try it. 1902 agreed to coop with us so we were excited to finally pull it off but they lost coms in the match and didn't show up. We were in position and another team with mechanums actually did climb our ramp and got into position with about 7 seconds left. So we went to lift and the ramp motor pinion snapped in half while the other bot was climbing our ramp so we couldn't lift the ramp to hang. Totally bummed out.

We didn't have a spare motor and pinion ready for that arm and tried to put something together for elims but I think we messed up the PG71 gearbox so the ramp/shooter/hanger never worked in elims.

1251 and 25 picked us and did a great job against the winning alliance. Since we couldn't do anything else, we tried to play defense on 86 coming to our scoring side but weren't effective without the ramp/shooter/hanger. We were going to try a 3 bot balance on top of the bridge but got flipped by 86.

Anyway, we'll have it hanging in Boca, I'm sure of it...