Announcing the 2013 December Design Competition

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce an open design competition for the month of December. The competition is simple: Everyone competing must design a robot in CAD to play Block Barrage, an FRC game designed by myself, Wasay Anwer (wasayanwer97), and another friend who wishes to stay anonymous. We are using this game to teach our teams strategic design in CAD modeling to train them for the build season, and thought it would be a fun idea to open it up as a competition to everyone.

The manual to Block Barrage as well as field CAD models can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KE7wZzBFStGrTJpDcyThG4okDQjb9Sr28KATjK1GqtM/edit?usp=sharing

The rules of this competition are relatively relaxed, since the goal of this competition is to learn and have fun. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to pm me directly or post in this thread.

The competition begins today (December 1st) and ends at the end of the month on December 31st. Two winners will be chosen by a panel of judges before kickoff: one student, and one mentor. The winning student will be awarded with bragging rights and a $50 American Express gift card generously donated by Akash Rastogi. Currently the prize for adults is the satisfaction of inspiring students with your genius design (other prizes may be added as they come, but since it is a learning activity it is all about the students).

Submission: When you are ready to submit your design, email either a Solidworks Pack and Go of the assembly or a STEP file (both is better) to [email protected] with a small description of your robot and your strategies for the game.

Good luck everyone!

I was going to do my homework but never mind.

Thank you very much to Akash Rastogi for generously donating a $50 American Express gift card to the winner of the competition!

Would it be possible to post a CAD of the field in a polygonal format like a .blend, .skp, .stl, or .dae for those of us with macs and no access to Inventor or Solidworks? Thanks!

The field for Block Barrage is a rectangular 27 by 54 ft anti-mecanum carpeted area bounded by alliance walls and side rails.

You made my day.
But unfortunately this carpet doesn’t exist. I checked mcmaster.

I might do this competition. It definitely sounds interesting.

Enclosed is the field converted to an stl file.

Let me know if there are any issues.

http://bit.ly/1gwyQIt

I really like the SECOND logo. Anyone care to make up what it stands for?

Student Engineers Constructing Outstanding New Designs

Spread this around to kids who don’t really use Chief Delphi. The more kids we can get prepared for 2014, the better the season will be for all teams. I wasn’t a part of the creation process for Andrew’s game, but the intent of it is great. Hope everyone puts in their best effort.

Good luck to whoever enters!

Just so I’m clear, students and mentors submit separately correct?

  • Sunny G.

Secretly
Encouraging
CADing
Of
New
Designs

STEM
Education for the
Creation of
Omnipresent
Non-mecanum
Drivetrains

Is descoring legal? I see no prohibition, but on the other hand…

Yes, students and mentors submit separately.

Descoring is completely legal. That being said, you get a pretty hefty penalty if you knock over a stack in the protected stack zone. Everything else is free game.

Yes. Students and mentors submit separately.

Collaboration is encouraged though, as always.

Reported.

I must say, it’s a very interesting game/challenge. I totally dig it. If we weren’t already neck deep into VEX, I’d have my team working on this.

Are you guys planning on releasing the design submissions after this is all over? I’d love to see what other people come up with.

Also, dat overpass.

  • Sunny G.

Are stacks required to be supported by the field?

I’d personally like to see releases similar to teams unveiling their robots after build season, but we are leaving the choice to unveil up to the submitters. Whatever they design is their property, so it’ll be their choice. That being said, as an individual waiting for kickoff, I’d suggest teams unveil their robots at least after the 31st when what you show won’t affect anyone else’s designs. It’s fun to see what others created, and maybe can provide some last minute inspiration for a design before the build season begins.