Previous Ball Games

[L.Pisano]

Hi all,
Just have a few questions regarding what games had balls involved in it, and what teams were successful with those games? Thanks,
Lucas Pisano

[Zem]

Past games involving a ball: 2019, 17, 16, 14, 12.
Idk about further back.

[L.Pisano]

Yeah, I was just doing some research and those were really the only games that had them.

[Jen_Lawrie]

I would add 2010 and 2006 to the list. I believe the 2006 ball and goal setup may be pretty similar to this year’s. Success is a tougher question. Success in handing the game pieces, scoring efficiency, unique strategies or designs, blue banners?

[BordomBeThyName]

I would say that the most relevant games to look at are 2006, 2012, and 2017. 14, 16, and 19 all involved large game pieces that you could only hold one of, and because of that a lot of the relevant designs aren’t applicable here.

[L.Pisano]

The next thing I would really like to know is what some of the better teams did. Like did they use flywheels or other systems.

[JamesCH95]

FRC 2012 "Best Designs" Log

Hello CD, So, this is an idea that I’d like to try and implement for all future years. Every year, a number of people go to the forums and look for the best designs to do this and that. Well, why not centralize it? What I’d like to do here is list out several categories of robot designs for the specific years, and people list their suggestions for what should be considered the “best design” for that category. Now, this is in no way going to end up being a definitive list of the best designs, b…

[Dez]

Balls have been used in some form in the following game years.

• 1992 Tennis balls.
• 1993 Both 13" rigid kick balls, and 6" water filled rigid balls.
• 1994 Three different variations of multi-colored soccer balls.
• 1995 Three different colored 30" elastic balls and 24" semi-elastic balls.
• 1996 Three different colored 24" elastic balls and 8" elastic balls.
• 1998 Three different colored 24" elastic balls.
• 2000 Yellow and black 13" texturized playground balls.
• 2001 Four colored 30" elastic balls and black 13" texturized playground balls.
• 2002 Yellow Size 5 Soccer balls.
• 2004 Yellow and purple 13" textured kick balls and yellow 30" semi-rigid balls.
• 2006 7" Poof bi-colored foam balls.
• 2008 Trackball, 40" elastic ball (bladder) with partial zipper spandex covering, ~7.5 pounds.
• 2009 9" bi-colored Orbit Balls made of two 1" wide continuous interweaved polymer strips with spandex fabric covers.
• 2010 Silver and white Size 5 soccer balls.
• 2012 Orange Gopher Deluscious Size 4 compact foam basketballs.
• 2014 Two colored 24" elastic ball (bladder) with partial zipper nylon covering.
• 2016 Boulder, Grey 10" Gopher SoftiBall coated foam ball.
• 2017 Fuel, 5" Screamin’ Yellow Gopher ResisDent polyethylene balls.
• 2019 Cargo, 13" Orange Sportime rubber playground ball.

[Akash_Rastogi]

http://www.firstrobotpics.com/

I highly recommend anyone analyzing past games check out this website.

[MrForbes]

Thanks…I’d been meaning to look for this robot

[BordomBeThyName]

Those wheels are enormous. Wasn’t 2006 a flat field?

[Ekcrbe]

Well, two answers:

1.) There was a big ramp up to a platform that you could get on for the endgame.

2.) Behold! Team 25.

Edit: Here’s a super throwback explanation

[GeeTwo]

Except for 2018 Power Up↗, every game in an even year, and many in odd years, has had balls as a primary game piece.

[Donut]

Adding to this, if I recall correctly 25 would intentionally grind their wheels to a size where each set was a slightly different diameter. This made it so that when driving the front and back wheels would slip slightly relative to the center wheels on the carpet, reducing the traction on those wheels to kinetic (rather than static) friction which made turning easier with the long wheel base. When they were stationary all wheels had static friction with the carpet and they became an immovable brick. Allowed them to hold position while scoring very effectively.