Was there ever a FIRST Competition where the playing field was filled with water like a pool? Wouldn’t it be cool if this would happen next year? Imagine all the different kinds of robot designs from using motors and using simple paddles. Tell me some of you ideas.
i can’t even begin to imagine the shorts and potential electrocutions… 
A lot of dead robots with no fixen um…
I have already thought of building a “boat robot”.
But I just thought, didn’t do anything else…
You want to see some water robots? Check out this site for the “Water Spiders” project :
also :
http://remo.net/spiders/proposals/caparts_proposal.htm
Now, is this great stuff or what???
Here’s a photo of one performance of the Water Spiders. (If I do this correctly, that is - about a 50-50 chance)
how come this topic comes up EVERY year?
:rolleyes: Water Competition is something we hear every year…
Ive been in FIRST for 3 years and my team has been involved since 92’. Every year this topic comes up and there are huge debates over it…it has never happened and i am sure that it wont for many years to come.
It’ll never happen.
Electricity and Water don’t mix. Found that out the hard way.
i joined first last year. the closet thing to a hazard ive seen is a bridge. I think that ramps, bridges etc would make the game alot better. personally i think water is just a bad idea. Batteries and water dont mix. I think maybe a rock pit or a sand trap would be fine. Teams would have to make durable robots. i DONT want anything extreme such as fire water big spikes or hammers attacking you. just a change of the playing surface. a 2 level playing field would also work. biggest rule change should be weight. change from 130 to 150 i know you have to bring it out every round so thats why we cant have 200 pound bots. the game this year was alot better than last. lets just hope dean stays on this path.
In the summer of 1999 we were working very hard to introduce the idea of the (then) new Southern California Regional Competition. A scrimmage match was held at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and lots of local potential sponsors and prospective teams were invited. The scrimmage was staged on the central mall at JPL, in front of the main headquarters building.
We figured, southern California in the early summer, holding it outside would be perfect, right? Wrong! Fourteen teams (I don’t remember all the teams that were there, but the BeachBots and the Archer School for Girls stick out in my memory) arrived early that morning, just to be greeted by a day of rain and drizzle cascading on to the uncovered play field. We thought we would have to call off the event, but someone suggested we give it a shot and see what happens.
All fourteen robots worked successfully all day. Throughout the matches, robots ran across the field in up to two inches of standing water. After matches the teams took robots back to the pits (the only dry areas under small tents) to wipe them down and sop up the excess water. But they were all constructed well enough that I don’t think we had one short all day, and every machine was still running by the end of the scrimmage. All the teams had paid attention to the rules (yes, everyone actually read all the rules back then! 
) and all electical connections were thoroughly taped and/or insulated, and withstood the moisture for the duration of their exposure to the rain. We were all pretty impressed by how well the robots (and team members) were able to withstand the extra “environmental constraint” and continue on. Somewhere in my files I have some great photos of rooster tails of water shedding off the wheels of some of the robots as they raced around the field.
Just one more point in the empirical data set of FIRST robot performances…
- dave
“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.”
– Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
Neato Dave, can you find the picture?
That’s fun and all, but i think that it would be a challenge if a 3 foot tall robot were sitting in 5 feet of water…I can see it already! Blub blub blub
Ricksta121, I agree with your thoughts on the ramps and/or bridges. I think the problem came when FIRST tried to make them MORE then just obsticles giving them point values, etc…
I’ll just say I’m glad I’m not the one who has to come up with the game every year!
*Originally posted by AdamT *
**I’ll just say I’m glad I’m not the one who has to come up with the game every year! **
I think for all our sake, we all are glad you are not the one that hast to come up with the game every year :p!!!
FINALLY, a competition where duct tape would be used for it’s original purpose!
imagine the possibilities of a water competition… like 4 to 6 inches of water on the field… you could have boat bots or driving bots… or combinations, the possibilities are just cool 
me and my friend stephen actually had a big conversation about this the other day
Dave, your story doesn’t match with the story that I was told. First of all, the scrimmage was in the summer of 2000 I know that much for sure, especially since Archer didn’t have a robot in the summer of 1999, as their team started for the 2000 season.
Unfortunately, I was not there, so my story is only second hand from my team mates. Beach Bot was the #1 seed, but I was told that the only reason for that was that they didn’t have any electrical problems during the course of the matches. Every other team had at least one match where they had some type of problem. My team mates were suprised at how few electrical problems there were, considering the circumstances, but apparently they were present.
On another note, if the guys on junkyard wars can build a submarine in 13 hours, think of what a FIRST team could do in 6 weeks!
*Originally posted by NeO_Weapon *
**Was there ever a FIRST Competition where the playing field was filled with water like a pool? Wouldn’t it be cool if this would happen next year? Imagine all the different kinds of robot designs from using motors and using simple paddles. Tell me some of you ideas. **
All I can see from that is almost every robot being dead on the field.
All I can see from that is almost every robot being dead on the field.
not if they use enough duct tape:D
Well, enjineering is based on problem solving so i think that whatever they through at us, we could come up with something...right? I mean, they would have to give us a little more than 6 weeks to build something that complicated.
And, well then calculations would be a pain in the butt because everything is lighter in water, and for calculating resistance we would have to somehow factor in the the mass of the water displaced and... Ok maybe we do have our limitations:rolleyes:I think a water match could be done, although it would be hard to set up.
The robot inspection would had to include throwing it in a pool to make sure nothing gets fryed…and I bet many things would fry…lol. Then what happens if your bot dies during a match? Who’s the poor person who gets to go for a swim to get it?
But besides the robots part of it, think about how they would set-up the playing fields. Some how I think setting up 40-foot long pools in a bunch of hockey arena’s wouldn’t be the easiest thing (or cheapest) to do.
Not that I wouldn’t mind seeing this happen - I doubt it will.
But, I think a water obsicacle could be done.
A couple years ago where there was the bridge in the middle of the field, why not change the bride to a moat (say 5" deep).
Something like a moat would certainly make people think about more design possibilites…Would be interesting…
But hey, could always put SOME water everywhere on the field…Enough so you could build a ‘boat’ or something with wheels…Be interesting to see that.
*Originally posted by Joe Ross *
**Dave, your story doesn’t match with the story that I was told. First of all, the scrimmage was in the summer of 2000
**
You are correct - I was off by one summer (I was converting between English and Metric calendars, and got confused! ). There was a small scrimmage at JPL in the summer of 1999, but it was not the one that made everyone damp. As for problems at the 2000 scrimmage, there were some throughout the day but every one that we saw, and every one reported to us, was mechanical in nature or a control system problem caused by something other than the rain (i.e. software problems, disconnected PWM cables, etc.). Frankly, all of us were amazed that there were not massive electrical problems, given that the robots were put in an envionrmental condition for which they were never designed.
I remember standing under an umbrella with Dave Brown at the competition (it’s ironic that the robots ran fine in the rain, but WE needed an umbrella…) and prognosticating about Dean and Woodie adding water hazards to future competitions after they saw how well the robots performed. There are lots of good reasons why this may end up to be a bad idea (DUH!) but it is still fun to think about. And who knows, maybe one of us will come up with a really creative, innovative way to add water hazards to the game that is also practical and easily implemented.
Maybe a kiddie pool in the middle of the play field as an obstacle? In the game, you can choose to ignore it and go around it. But if you make your robot water-tolerable and go through the pool, you get some major point advantage in the game.
All the Navy-sponsored teams would have a real advantage!
-dave
“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.”
- Walt Disney