The REAL chokehold of 2016

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

Hello CD !

You probably remember my last thread about cheesecake. Well my team decided not to use this strategy for our next regional, because it's just too much pressure. So here we are, making it public

We were able to design a robot (see thumbnails) to completely block access to both low goals at the same time. We were looking at G25 -C

C. blocking GOAL(S) while in contact with its own BATTER using anything outside its FRAME PERIMETER except its BUMPERS

Both low goals now have a maximum opening of about 8". Pretty hard to force a boulder in there

The chokehold, here, is to make any robot that has no high goal capacity literally unable to score. Any alliance that has no high goal shooter could not do anything else than breaching all game, and, as you should know, those points are very limited. The robot has 3 wheel kiwi drive, that allows it to go over the secret passage, and go sideways under the low bar to come back and capture.

We were able to build the robot in about half a day, using only a jigsaw and about 5 pounds of our withholding allowance for parts that required more complex machining. about 40ft of raw aluminum bars make the frame of the robot.
What do you guys think?

Edit: Bumpers as shown are not legal, we are working on iterating on CAD to make it work

[Christopher149]

Bumper rules are a pain, don't you know?

So, because the frame perimeter is convex, the two "bumpers" on the trailing edge of your "flying wing" aren't actually bumpers, and thus this is robot is not legal.

[Duncan Macdonald]

R19 makes this illegal... The front side frame perimeter needs 16" of bumper which would ruin the geometry.

[MaGiC_PiKaChU]

Originally Posted by Duncan Macdonald

R19 makes this illegal... The front side frame perimeter needs 16" of bumper which would ruin the geometry.

Right, guess we did not think about that convex perimeter problem. We could probably iterate on those bumpers to mount them on the actual perimeter, but then they would enter the goals, which sounds illegal. The perimeter is only at like 113 inches like we built it, so there is still some room to get wider so the bumpers become legal

[Jaci]

Ahh yes, the good old "let's dedicate all our resources to absolutely cheesing the opponent alliance" strategy

[RonAyyyyyyyy]

Originally Posted by Jaci

Ahh yes, the good old "let's dedicate all our resources to absolutely cheesing the opponent alliance" strategy

I mean, this is a competition, and if this was legal it would completely neutralize low goal bots, giving them a big advantage

[anishde]

The issue is with this robot on an alliance, challenging and scaling become a pain for their alliance partners if possible at all.

[marshall]

This is very interesting...

[Sperkowsky]

If you could make this legal and you build a blocker on top this could be a really good 2nd pick.

[Ari423]

Won't the batter dividers get in the way of the wings? I don't remember how tall they are offhand, but I would think they are taller than the bottom of the highest allowable bumper.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Antoine,
If your design were a true triangle and had 8" of bumper on both sides of each of the three corners, it would meet that part of the bumper rules.

[nuclearnerd]

Or make the robot a triangle, and the wings could be flip-out extensions from the frame perimeter.

As a team with a dedicated low goal scorer, this thing is terrifying. I think it's perfectly legit though. Great job, and stay away from us

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

Or make the robot a triangle, and the wings could be flip-out extensions from the frame perimeter.

As a team with a dedicated low goal scorer, this thing is terrifying. I think it's perfectly legit though. Great job, and stay away from us

It's terrifying until you hit one of the wings really really hard.

[JamesCH95]

Check R19 very carefully, specifically the example in the bottom right corner of Fig. 4-4. There is no such thing as a convex frame perimeter, by definition frame perimeters cannot be convex.

If you can make it work with this rule... well, that would be very interesting! As-is your robot example doesn't appear legal.

[nuclearnerd]

You could probably make this work without a convex bumper. You could make the robot a triangle, with two gaps in the "front" bumper. You park on the center batter, and when a robot approaches a low goal you rotate slightly to push the gap intake that corner of the tower.

Since you have to rotate to block, two offensive robots working together could slip a ball past you on the other side, but you would still reduce the number of goals significantly.

I love this effort though. Evolving strategies and robots keeps FRC interesting over the competition season.