anyone think the designs will be getting repetative with the exception of those few…WHOA THATS CRAZILY AWESOME…things. After a decent amount of reading here, ive seen sooo many similarities with not only the lifting mechanism, but also the ball grabber device.
any thoughts?
We thought that would be the case with Rack n Roll, but each robot was unique. There’s enough smarts and ingenuity in the FIRST community that there aren’t too many repeats (outside of the Triplets or Martians…).
true. i just see this years game more difficult (mainly with the size of the ball and the height it needs to hurdle. 6 ft would be so much easier than 6.5’) and how the scoring looks like it was designed to stop runaway matches.
the details will be unique (fortunately) but ive seen alot of forklift ideas on a telescoping track.
Our design to have four omni wheels and two center drive wheels seemed a little old. But we are rookies trying to keep it realistic. Im sure that we wont be the only ones with that system
I think most grabbers will be the similar since we have such a large gamepiece and such a small operating envelope, which eliminates many unique and creative designs. No matter the year, many robots also share lifter designs, since there are only so many viable options (scissor, forklift, 4-bar, 2 jointed, etc). So, I think many arms will end up looking very similar (but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
In my opinion, much of the creativity this year will be in the drive systems. Ackerman systems will definitely be out in record numbers. Many folks with swerve designs in their bags of tricks will use them. Lots of mecanum/kiwi/4-wheel omni drives will be made. All this will be in addition to the teams that stick with their tried-and-true treads and 2/4/6/8/14 wheel tank-style drives. Such a wide variety will certainly be interesting to watch, and especially exciting to those of us who really like designing drivetrains.
Considering the huge variety of different designs that our team has concocted and considered (from the “roller-coaster” to the “flapper-doo” to the “hopper-bot” and beyond) - I think it’s possible to have a huge variety of different, creative robot/component designs, even if they perform the same basic tasks.
our newest arm concept has been named “chop sticks”. i dont even know why.
this has got to be the absolute most descriptive robot name i’ve ever heard 
Well, technically, that’s the name of a component - but unique components always manage to get their name on the entire robot design (they’re easier to distinguish that way).
Last year we tryed to do some complicated things and it just all blew up in our faces (except for our drivetrain) so we are kinda doing things we have done in the past and what we are good at.
That’s the best approach.
Hey we have flapper doos! I think MARS made a roller coaster too 
Frankly, when I saw this game I could have told you what the pink bot would look like. So you guys didn’t need to go through all that trouble
Anyway, I agree about the restrictive design envelope forcing most arms to look the same. The differences I think will be in the effectiveness. Some teams will handle the ball surely and quickly, others not so much. I think a lot of these arms will cause the bots to fall over, in lifting or hitting the overpass. Which might mean some nasty collisions, until they come off. Then we’ll see some interesting plan b herding devices.