Ball Stealers! (Yoink!)

[Anton Abaya]

As I recall 2000 competition, some robots decided to just steal balls from the goals instead of picking them up.

We must remember however that two years ago, these goals werent going anywhere.

Although on the other hand, it seems to me a lot of teams are saying, "Dang boy! These are darn heavy goals!"

So would it not be easier to steal balls from a full goal and bring it to an empty one, than to steal and entire goal?

-antonsexy

[Joe Matt]

No.
End of story.

[Skanker]

Timewise... not really. I mean, you COULD try to scoop ALL (or some) of the balls out and move them to a goal strategically advantageous to you. Most likely, you would be moving small amounts at a time (like one or two or three). This could possibly require more than one trip, wheras swapping the goals is just one round trip... even if they are ungodly heavy.

THEN AGAIN, you could use your special ability to 'fine tune' the score so you would win by a smaller margin <-- this would be much more efficient (and faster) than moving goals around.

Think about time. you have only two minutes to complete your tasks. zipping across the field 5 times and pausing for ball loading at each stop takes muck longer than going at a medium speed and grabbing one goal and pulling (or pushing) it around

[JVN]

I think stealing balls would only be practical if you were already attached to another goal. You could funnel them directly into the goal attached to your back. But once again that brings you back to moving the goals around.... ohh well... but wait... what if you had a huge robot that could have a goal in both scoring zones on opposite sides of the field, and a giant conveyor belt between them... that way you could balance the score as the game develops.... make it precisely 66-64....

ahh well... I tried but I can't think of a design which does the above....

~JVN whose head hurts just thinking about a 30 foot robot