At the NJ regional, it seemed that there was one flip evry match. During some matches, three robots flipped. It was horrible. If you thought alot of robots flipped last year, get ready for a surprise. Was this the same at the other regionals? Do you think it will keep happening? The funny one was…robots that are supposibly not top heavy, flipped too…
Our team wasn’t worried about flipping while we built, and then SPLAT, twice we flipped. Surprisingly, we looked best when we flipped. the first time we flipped we during autonomous, we got it to go up the 3 small steps, around the stationary goal,and up to the top platform, but then it overshot and flipped down.
hmmm thats kind of dissapointing… were the robots flipped on purpose by other teams? or were the flips just accidental… like when trying to get on the platform? i’ve always had a certain anger for teams that flip other robots on “accident”.
Very few teams actually flipped other bots on purpose, but yet there were still some… Most where just trying the get on th platform and flipped, but where so surprised, because they never thought it would EVER happend. I think there will also be alot of “accident” flipping becasue some people are just good hangers, and thats really the only way to slow them down…
I also saw robots immobalised by small balls! The robot would skip up onto the ball and the robots frame kept the wheels off the ground.
Oh by the way, come up with a wheelie bar (if you haven’t got one yet) and put it on your bot, now.
If I remember correctly - I think most of the flips at VCU were accidents, and the flips caused by other robots were unintentional. We never flipped, but were leaning backwards against the stationary goal one time and I dont know how we managed to get it sitting back up. We went up on the top platform and put the arm up which makes us top-heavy. Another robot came up the other side and pushed us back and we slipped off and tipped back. I don’t remember what match it was but I think it was one of the last ones. Anybody remember? I’m too tired to think that much.
Gee, I wonder who? 
All it takes it to pass the center fo gravity and your bot falls over. I believe someone described balls as “cuddly landmines”, and the ramp requires a tip of faith. However, many of the robots who flipped were able to right themselves. The best part about falling off the platform was landing straight into the large goals filled with balls. The balls were cushiony and the PVC piping allowed many robots to bounce back up.
Instead of complaining the game is badly designed, I think of it this way: FIRST knew what they were doing, and created and game with so many intricacies that they knew some would be overlooked. The teams that could ignore or planned for such problems would prove themselves exemplary.
Yeeeah… That’s a good way to look at it.