Balls bouncing out of goal

[Andrew Blair]

Ultimately, its just another design challenge...

But, the way out that I see is to shoot closer, slower, and higher. This alone seems to fix much of the problem. But again, another challenge...

[Wayne Doenges]

Scoring objects passing through the opening will be deflected downward by the mesh, and will exit the Center Goal by dropping into a collection tube at the bottom of the goal. There, they can be retrieved by the Human Players.

I don't see any mention of the balls being deflected back out after they have entered the center goal.
I didn't hear any mention of this possibility at the kick off event. Did I miss a memo? If it had been mentioned we could have allowed for it with our shooter.
I was under the impression that the balls would remain in the center goal after they have entered it.
Is it because the chains are too long and hang down into the bottom of the opening?
Would it help if the chains were behind the mesh? This way they would still slow down the momentum of the balls.

[Tim Delles]

Originally Posted by Wayne Doenges

I don't see any mention of the balls being deflected back out after they have entered the center goal.
I didn't hear any mention of this possibility at the kick off event. Did I miss a memo? If it had been mentioned we could have allowed for it with our shooter.
I was under the impression that the balls would remain in the center goal after they have entered it.
Is it because the chains are too long and hang down into the bottom of the opening?
Would it help if the chains were behind the mesh? This way they would still slow down the momentum of the balls.

I have a few questions for you:

1.) Did your team build a center goal? If so why didn't you test things on it? Did you notice that it was also tilted down (10 degrees from vertical)?
2.) Did you think about spin on the ball when it hits a surface? If so did you account for it being chains, and chains giving back on the ball?

[Jonathan Norris]

I feel that FIRST could have done a much better job with this, (yes its a design challenge and all..). But I feel that the chains should be replaced with a mesh type material, I saw a practice scrimmage which used this and worked beautifully. I haven't seen the game in person yet, But from all the video shots and web casts that I have watched there are a good percentage of the balls bouncing out. It is already tough enough to score in the center with all the defense being played, and having 30+% of your balls bounce out just makes it that much unnecessarily harder. I hope FIRST deals with this problem before there are too many people complaining.