Cool Ideas thrown out in the design process

[sithmonkey13]

This topic for cool ideas somebody came up with for their robot during the brainstorming stage, but people voted it down for maybe not working or maybe too hard. For example, for the Breakaway game, one member came up with the idea of a "Low Rider" bot. The wheels would have been attached to pneumatic pistons. When driving to the tunnel, we would drop down, and be able to go under the tunnel, but if we wanted to go over the bump, we could raise the pistons. A mentor said we would have to do a lot of work to make it work, so several people voted to do the idea that a lot of other teams at the St. Louis Regional did.

[Chris is me]

It's also unfortunately illegal due to this year's design rules that prohibit articulating your robot's bumpers, since in one of the two configurations the robot would be out of the bumper zone.

I was particularly interested in seeing a robot that implemented some kind of "Simswerve" type system like 1114 used in 2004, but the articulating bumper restrictions also made that at least look illegal.

I'm pretty sure someone on the team suggested we try building a robot that sits under the tower and just bounces balls from the return toward the goals, but people didn't think that design would go anywhere...

[flameout]

Someone (I don't remember who -- it might've even been me, but I forgot...) brought up the idea of tape measures for a hanging arm.

We got some, and worked with the idea, but were concerned that it would be too unreliable (if the robot shakes or is bumped, they will snap and come downwards, and would remove any chance of a retry).

It would've been really neat, though, to see on the competition field.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by flameout

Someone (I don't remember who -- it might've even been me, but I forgot...) brought up the idea of tape measures for a hanging arm.

We got some, and worked with the idea, but were concerned that it would be too unreliable (if the robot shakes or is bumped, they will snap and come downwards, and would remove any chance of a retry).

It would've been really neat, though, to see on the competition field.

The Rhode Rebels (3280) implemented that design rather successfully with a really wide tape. It fell sometimes, but it often worked.

[davidthefat]

My idea of a variable "ball shooter". Similar to the football launcher (see picture)



It was my first time in robotics and the very first real meeting. Right after the kickoff, I started up Blender and made a very rough "sketch" 3d model of it, assuming that I would make it more accurate after. Took me a very long time to get the idea right. Then I come up to present to the team, btw this was my very first time, even meeting all the mentors except for my teacher. LOL I got pretty good responses then I got shot down at the end saying that it was illegal... That was pretty bad


I also had the idea of using the camera to track the angle and kick it according to that, that never worked out cause our kicker was very unpredictable...