Sitting on top of tubes

[tbmantia]

I thought about the same thing and I put a 40 pound table flat on the tube and then kneeled on it and it did not pop-I weigh 240lbs. Seems silly but it actually worked.

[BrianR]

Ok, ya, its all about pressure, not weight, so as long as you distribute it evenly you should be just fine with even more weight.

[Cyberguy34000]

Personally, I think game pieces are considered "field elements" and teams will penalized for resting on them.

That said, I do think they should bend the rules a bit and allow creative teams the opportunity to stack a robot on top of the tubes. Though they should assign a penalty if the robot happens to pop them. Making it a fairly risky endeavor, but it would encourage some creativity from teams. Though you've got to consider, the only reason you'd want to do this is so that two robots can climb on top of another robot, and you'd want to support that one robot off the ground. So we're not really talking about whether an inner tube can supporting 120ish pounds of one robot, we're really talking about supporting 360 pounds of 3 robots!

Yeah, I don't think it'll happen. Of course there's also every individual robot climbing onto an inner tube, which would also be an option, though once you get to this pointt would be much easier for teams to just design a decent ramp

[Duncan Macdonald]

Originally Posted by BrianR

When we inflated our tube, we wanted to distribute the weight over the tube, so we put a drafting board on top of it. We didn't have a robot on hand, but we stacked the entire KOP on the board, and it sank to about 6.5" , which is interesting. Has anyone else noticed that they are really only about 7.5" high, not 9.5 like the rulebook claims? So it sank about an inch, although I can't give you a number for how much weight we used. Tomorrow when the weightroom is open we're gonna go try it out with exactly 135 lbs (have to add in bumpers).

Don't forget the battery

[MrShifty]

The "climbing on a tube" angle seems to be lawering the rule a bit. The spirit of the rule is clearly to get robots that can stack on top of one-another. I suspect that a revision/clarification to the rules will reflect this.

That said, there was a lot of discussion today about doing that. It would be an interesting mechanism that would allow a robot to climb on a tube without flipping it, popping it, or falling off. Those things are tricky for people to get in (in a pool)...

[Guy Davidson]

I think the main question is this: does a tube count as a field element? Because as per <G56> ROBOTS in HOME ZONE - ROBOTS score bonus points at the end of the match if they are entirely in their HOME ZONE, not in contact with any element of the field (carpet, alliance station, goal etc.) I think tubes count as field elements, and hence this will not qualify for bonus points.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by MrShifty

The "climbing on a tube" angle seems to be lawering the rule a bit. The spirit of the rule is clearly to get robots that can stack on top of one-another. I suspect that a revision/clarification to the rules will reflect this.

That said, there was a lot of discussion today about doing that. It would be an interesting mechanism that would allow a robot to climb on a tube without flipping it, popping it, or falling off. Those things are tricky for people to get in (in a pool)...

I have already thought of a safe, non-damaging, & effective way (in theory of course.. have to add that in there since nothing was built yet. ) for at least a class 3 (light weight) robot to do this.
I will hold off on releasing this idea if we decide to not do it, cause I would LOVE to see a team try this if it is legal and would gladly give input to a team who wants to take that challenge.

<crosses fingers for legality ruling>

[Armando Gonzalez]

Hahaha great minds think alike
I asked Woodie on the Manchester Kick-off and sadly we can't do that for a bonus.

[Tri_Lam]

even if they did allow us would be hard considering we have fifteen seconds of the match to do it if not before hand

and plus we cant use multiple tubes to distribute our weight cuz we can only be touching one tube ate a time. saying this statement is point less considering the last 2-3 comments negated this whole conversation