With this years competition involving 3 robots potential going onto a small platform plus moving around the community area which is relatively a small area. Is it possible decreasing robot width could be a a good strategy for this year? All response welcomed!
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In my opinion, yes making the bot smaller is a good design choice for this year. The charge station likely won’t fit 3 max-size robots and so being small is beneficial as it becomes easier to do a triple climb.
Currently, my team is planning on building a 26x26 bot but I’ve heard some others mention going as small as 24x24
with bumpers or without, asking for charging station purposes.
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We have designed the 2023 Everybot to have a 22" X 28.3" frame such that it takes up as little width on the Charge Station as possible to enable a triple balance.
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I second this.
In my opinion, there isn’t really a reason to go 30x30, as the entire game can be accomplished with smaller robots and fitting on the platform is important. Good chance your odds of being picked go down unless your performance is better because of a larger bot size.
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I think it’s worth it. First of all, while you probably won’t see a whole lot of three robot charge station docks during most qualification rounds, it could end up being a good opportunity during playoffs.
The natural maximize space instinct would be to increase length to compensate for decreased width, but because of the geometry of the Charging Station, this could end up being a problem with trying to get up and over the top edge depending on your robots weight distribution. Also, be very careful of the distance from the center of your front wheels to the edge of your bumpers - if too long, you will hit the ramp and push the ramp instead of being able to drive on.
My team is going 32 x 26 only because we need the length to fit our main mechanism and we have a cutout in the front of our chassis. We might go narrower (our chassis design is flexible) if everything fits, but we are also exploring the idea of balancing on the edge of the CS with one set of wheels on and one off.
Hope this helps!
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Smaller robots help scoring at the grid too. Furthermore makes you a harder target to hit with (intentional or not) defense.
No game in my (admittedly limited) memory has directly incentivized building the biggest robot possible. The goal for me has always been “the smallest robot that can contain everything I need it to,” which has meant maximum perimeter, mostly because it wasn’t worth the effort to make it smaller. This year, it’s definitely worth the effort.
2016 and the low bar is about the only thing that comes to my mind, maybe 2012 for bridge balance.
2017 had some frame choice options, but I don’t think that counts.
2013 had the limits of the pyramid rungs, but that by no means limited the fundamental viability of playing the game.
In FTC, 2019 incentivized a short robot and 2021 and 2022 incentivized a narrow one to get through the tight spaces.
We have a 24x26 robot and we’ve found that it works really well for working with alliance partners for triple balancing.
Infinite recharge also had the trench if that counts
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