Hello everyone! captain for 7810 Eagle Robotics here today with a quick question
over our off-season, two of my builders came up with the amazing idea of a robot that, with a static chassis, can equip multiple different “heads” - through my skimming of the rules, I’ve seen nothing prohibiting this, but also have not seen much on it at all - any help on determining the legality of this bot would be greatly appreciated!
(AutoCAD drawing coming soon!)
What you’re looking for is “modular” robot.
Take a look at the Inspection rules as there’s some peculiarities with the size/weight limits that you need to know. (Yes, I know it’s an odd place. But that is where it is.)
so, as in i103 (ChargedUP! game [manual])(https://firstfrc.blob.core.windows.net/frc2023/Manual/2023FRCGameManual.pdf)
we would need to bring all heads to inspection and they can’t exceed 150 lbs?
This might require a little research, but find out what 1519 attempted to do in FIRST Overdrive, and see if you can implement some of what they did with what you want to do.
No. You need to inspect the ‘robot’ as-is that will be competing in each match. Any major adjustment/changes since inspect to each match requires an re-inspection.
What constitute as major changes - anything that will change the size/shape/weight of your robot by any meaningful amount. And if in doubt, ask and get an inspecter at the event - better safe than to be sorry.
I would recommend against doing something like this…
The potential gains are far outweighed by added mechanical complexity and lost time during build. Plus, odds are the game isn’t complex enough to warrant more subsystems than can fit on a single superstructure.
what about rule i104?
i understand that sentiment, however it is not my job to determine what my team wants to do - only to make it possible
As a team captain, it’s not part of your job to provide guidance and wisdom? To help your team make the best possible choices?
I disagree - I104F says as long as everything has gone through inspection and the RI is aware of the changes, you can make those modular replacements between matches without needing to be reinspected each time.
Usual caveat of: previous seasons’ rules do not apply to the current year. Having said that, this has been consistently on the books for years.
you see, i do provide my guidance, but i believe that what best for my team is to learn as much as possible, not to place as well as possible - and i think this is an amazing learning opportunity
Evergreen, to be exact.
In this case, inspect the lot, inspect in all configurations, good to go. Pro tip: you will likely need the LRI at some point in this process. Robots doing this are rare, so your average inspector may be quite confused for a few minutes.
I say go for it. Obviously know the rules and approach the LRI early on the loading/inspection timeline to make things smooth.
There is no reason you can’t do this. Hypothetically say we have two vastly different gamepieces (that’s common in this era of FRC ; 2015, 2017, 2019, 2023). Say you carefully evaluate your teams resources next season and decide that since the GDC intentionally made it a challenge to solve this hypothetical game with a single end effector you will just swap things out as needed.
There is nothing inherently wrong with solving problems in this manner.
Something something golden rules of FRC everyone loves. “Better to have fewer mechanisms working really well than many/complex mechanisms working partially”
Your job is to make sure that: by having different modules, they work better than some combined mechanism that you can develop. And that you use the right one for the right match (i.e. scouting feedback to strategy)
Maybe you have a “hopper” style of module for a low goal to get an RP bonus when you are the only bot on the qualification alliance that can score (I.e. guarantee that RP). Maybe you have a high goal scoring module when there is scoring power on the qualification or elim alliance.
Don’t let the users of this forum shove FRC tradition down your throat. Modularity is a just as valid problem solving method as anything. There is a reason there is no one size fits all drill bit or people don’t question why winter tires exist …
this is an amazing response, thank you - we have a lot on our plate as a team this year, as a small team doing swerve, but i think we will take your advice into mind and determine this going forward!
I think the key here is evaluating your capabilities vs the game. Have this approach in your back pocket, don’t get married to the idea and deploy it where it doesn’t make sense.
The modular approach is probably not best suited for swapping everything above the bumpers, but if you had to swap a major sub assembly it may make sense to design gamepiece specific ones that work really well vs fighting with a combination.
This is especially true if the prototyping skill for making combined mechanisms isn’t there.
I am not sure if this actually was used, but 4144 had two different climbing mechanisms for worlds that they would swap for elims. You can see it in their Behind the Bumpers video at 11:00
I can’t remember which team did this in 2018, they were at champs but they told me they had their students have like an internal competition in which they’d split up into subteams that each will develop their own mechanisms, at the end of the day the team took all their 4 mechanisms and could switch them using half-turn fasteners
I’ve had an amazing time with Autocad, saved my file incorrectly, and can’t fix my dimensions as it stands at the moment - I will try my best to get a chassis CAD out within the next week
I don’t think we will do a multi-head bot, but we will probably use a chassis that can accept different heads for re-use in later years
That last one… it sounded like you were talking about reusing an entire drivetrain.
You might want to double-check the rules on that. There might be ways to do it. But generally that’s a “no, you can’t do that”.
you must bear with me, my team is young, and I’m not the world’s most knowledgeable on the subject
what I was referring to is a “standard design” that allows us, as a team, to take the stress off of designing a chassis - so although we would not reuse the same chassis, we would use similarly based on the one CAD file
you must understand, my team consists of six to ten people, sometimes as low as four - I don’t have time to fully read the rules, nor understand them completely - that’s why I turn to these forums with my crazy ideas (see omniSwerve) you are all so knowledgable, and i must thank you.