TerryS:
Innovative way to pick balls up. Have you considered what will happen to your mechanism if you have a head on collision as you and your opponent race to pick up the same ball? Looks like it’s pretty beefy so my guess is that your mechanism will survive. I might be more concerned that your roller jumps over the opponent’s bumper and damages something on their robot. Per rule [G27] you could be penalized or yellow carded regardless of your intent.
[G27]
[INDENT]High speed accidental collisions may occur during the Match and are an expected part of the game. Robots place mechanisms outside of the Frame Perimeter at their own risk; no penalties will be assigned for contact between two such extended mechanisms.
A Robot with a mechanism outside of its Frame Perimeter may be penalized under this rule if it appears they are using that mechanism to purposefully contact another Robot inside its Frame Perimeter. Regardless of intent, a Robot with a mechanism outside its Frame Perimeter that causes damage to another Robot inside of its Frame Perimeter will be penalized.
Repeated or egregious violations of this rule will earn the offending Robot a Yellow Card.[/INDENT]
I guess you can avoid this situation with careful driving.
Thanks.
We have considered what sort of hits front rollers can survive, and it might bend, but we’ll bend it back.
The side plates on the carwash are designed to cradle the lowest possible bumper configuration, so protrusion into a legally-bumper’d robot should be a non-issue. We plan on driving very carefully also, of course.
JesseK:
Terry has a good point. But man, the car wash mechanism isn’t anywhere in the realm of stuff we thought of. It’s kind of like 45’s ball intake from the late 90’s, where a spinning roller spat a ball vertically into a catcher net, which then fed it to the conveyor. If you can’t find a better way to funnel while driving,** maybe a net will help**.
Just put a net on tonight! In addition to a better ‘funnel’ geometry to guide the balls into the base of the tower. We are still considering a secondary roller to help push everything into the tower.