Amount of contact this year

[Stephen Kowski]

I think in autonomous while people are going after the bonus balls you will see some of the more interesting hits....

[Cory]

Originally Posted by monsieurcoffee

Due to those hits, I don't think teams are designing mechanisms to lift themselves 10 full feet into the air. All they need to do is get off the platform.

But getting 5+ feet off the floor will make you immune to smashing by many teams, making it a very good strategy. If you're 6" off the ground, you're going to take a real pounding.

Cory

[generalbrando]

This year we have those important large balls and all the small balls running around. Since these are very important I expect to see a lot of teams manipulating them. In 2001 you didn't have to worry about designing a grabber that would withstand high impacts and lots of pulling. This year should be a different story. I can see teams coming up with super strong grabbers or other means of holding the ball firmly and/or stealing it. I can also see these grabbers getting twisted into pretzels. I think this year is much more like 2000 in terms of contact because 2002/3 didn't require the same kind of extra mechanisms to accomlish the tasks while still being able to take a bit of a beating.

[greencactus3]

hold on, ARE we allowed to try to take the big balls from say, a robot who has a grip on the ball. like tearing it from their grip?