It’s summer, and I’ve been playing with ideas in my head.
Let’s say the primary 2019 game piece was a bowling ball. A big heavy one.
What sort of goals might you have to accomplish with it?
How would you design a robot to accomplish these?
Very, very carefully
Darn it. I’d planned on hastily throwing together a robot that was purely supported by electrical tape and rubber bands. What do I do now???
Since our build location is my bowling center, I would at least have easy access to a game piece.
I think an interesting challenge would be lifting it. Most manipulators I’ve seen have relied entirely on friction to grip the ball, and that’s mught not work with something that heavy. It would take some amount of work to get it into some sort of “basket” that lets you easily control the ball.
I think you’d knock over pins. You could call them ‘Space Aliens’.
If you hated launching penalties this year…
Skee ball with bowling balls!
Human player ball return through a chute where you try to nail the opponents robot when they line up for a shot.
Bowling balls of different weights and a balancing end game.
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Astro-navigating in Deep Space is all based on gravity wells. Bowling balls could symbolize cargo pods that have to be ejected to the correct planets, that is, gravity wells.
I’m guessing that this year instead of carpet, FIRST will spring for a complicated 3d floor with gravity wells built it. Will make driving interesting.
Am I the first one to think of this?
In Deep Space, mass means very little. You give it a little momentum and watch it go, go, go… perhaps it will get caught in a larger cosmic object’s gravity pull… All a robot would have to go is merge paths with it and nudge it… 
Well, way to go, thanks a lot. I’m sure some folks from First are on here, and i’m sure one of them saw that and were like “oh hey that’s a great idea.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but First normally plans games out in advance so 2019 planning is wrapping up and 2020 is probably under already.
Alternatively, they said: “Crap, they thought of that one too. Back to the drawing board!”
[STRIKE]football game when[/STRIKE]
My team has been using anti matter dampeners for years to offset a portion of our robot weight by canceling it out. We’d probably have a system to slap one of those babies on the bowling ball like you would flex-tape on a recently sawed in half boat to effectively reduce the weight of the bowling ball to 0.
Field reset?
With the new Name that Planet Contest we may have a bit more information about next years game.
The planet which will likely be part of or all of the playing field in 2019, is described as inhospitable, toxic, and having an ever-changing landscape.
While the inhospitable and toxic will likely be incorporated into the theme more than the game itself, mentioning the landscape really jumps out to me as having an effect on the field design.
We haven’t had terrain on the field since 2016, and ever-changing landscape could mean moving terrain like the 2012 ramps or like the cycling defenses in 2016.
Get those pneumatic wheels ready!
> Lunacy 2
> Stronghold defenses
> Rebound Rumble ramps
Lunar Stronghold 2: Rebound Boogaloo?
My guess is it will be the robots’ job to terraform the planet. The robots will have to shoot the toxic air (wiffle balls) into high and low goals…
I kid of course. In reality I think there could potentially balls of varying sizes (a bit bigger than 2017 to a bit smaller than 2014) that are randomly put onto the field to represent the ever changing-landscape and need to be pushed into goals on the sides of the fields to prepare the land for humans. I would also imagine some sort of air cleaning activity could be involved, potentially an end game such as (I am blanking here, having a climbing endgame for all three years of my FRC experience has made it hard to think of other ones).
I would be surprised to see a game element that moves actively, seems like it would be complicated to set up both initially and for each match. I would also be surprised to see elements that changed each match given the time that costed in 2016.
I would probably have a floor intake and just push it around, because FIRST would not make us throw it.