Pretty much the topic. The whole dialog about how many inches a hatch panel is launched is like *** greek to me because I have learned the life lesson to never expect anything from H&L until I have put a couple of pounds of force into it. I have never known hook & loop fastener to be particularly good at “catching” things [apart from 100+# personnel who have dressed up in one and launched themselves at a wall of the other] and have known it to to fasten much better if some force is applied for a second or so. Am I totally out of touch here, or what?
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I think you are spot on. Shooting the hatch panels is not going to be dependable. H&L needs some “push” or even some vibration to attach properly.
I think some people are worried that their “pushing” mechanism could also launch the hatch panel if not used against the rocket/cargo ship. It might be hard to exert a pushing force at seven feet in the air but yet be incapable of launching the hatch panel (note: hard does not mean impossible).
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Flicking panels onto hatches seemed to work surprisingly well in RI3D videos, even from off angles. Agree a little force is needed, but gravity is also a force that will be in play. My hunch is it’s viable given the surface area of hook and loop in play.
Launching hatch panels and actually getting them to stick involve so many variables to the point that it isn’t reliable and can be unpredictable. Our team is using the usual velcro and pneumatic piston system where it attaches using velcro (its pretty reliable from what i’ve seen) and gets pushed off by a pneumatic piston.
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I would be interested to see if any teams are flinging or throwing the hatch panels. Their are too many variables in throwing it for my liking. My team is using a grabber mechanism to grab it from the inside.
There may be a little more besides driver controlled launching. Robots that drive autonomously during Sandstorm attacking the rocket would love being able to shoot from 1 inch away from the hatch, assuming a good vision system. This leads to a quicker and safer delivery, especially with an elevator system. Launching 2-3 feet accurately though I think is nearly impossible to control, especially if there are defensive bots in the way. Not sure how possible this is: almost no teams have a robot to program autonomous yet for anyway.
We’ve come up with a method that “flings” (not sure how to really describe it other then that) the hatch panel to score it, it’s only like 6 inches or so but we have our mechanism mounted to a frame and they’ve been able to drive around and score 100 in a row a few times so far without a sticking issue. Needless to say we still have a lot of different tests to do with driving and releasing, releasing at different heights etc and will be keeping a close eye on this rule.
There is a rule that says if your bot is capable of launching a hatch panel 2 feet you instantly fail inspection… Not the best idea in my opinion.
Be careful with this.
Yes, but your hooks and loops have not see the abuse the ones used in a real match will. They will wear and I think your reliability gets worse with wear.
This has been changed in rule updates to 3 feet. You should probably look at them as there is a lot more detail now on how the inspection for this will actually happen.