On the field, when the scale is down as far as it can be, the clearance underneath is ~48". That means that if your robot is 55" tall, you now limit yourself from taking advantage of the full 8 feet of the lane because 2 feet of it would be unable to be driven through. Do you think it is a good idea to stay under 48" or is it pointless and unnecessary to be able to drive wherever without fear of being clotheslined?
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I say it is best to have a shortish robot with extensions of some sort. That way you can contract the arm or whatever so you can go anywhere anytime metaphorically. But you need to be careful to make sure you contract the extensions or you still could get hit.
I think that part of what needs to be considered here isn’t only any potential height constraints but if going to 55" will seriously throw off your center of gravity as well. Sure, you could have some more reach up to the scale or to climb, but this is a game where there isn’t an even field. Additional height means that you have to factor in any potential tipping over, especially during endgame where you want to be on the platform.
In my opinion it is pointless. As long as you don’t full sprint your 55" bot into the scale you should be fine.
Agreed. It all boils down to good drive practice, and not putting your battery at the very top of your bot.
It definitely has its merits.
In the case that your team has made the decision to not have access to the SCALE, it would seem that the only driving factor of your robot’s height would be the height of the SWITCH FENCE, PORTAL, and EXCHANGE, assuming you want access to all three. The SWITCH FENCE is only 18.75in tall, with the EXCHANGE RETURN and the PORTAL’s bottom edges rest at 20in from the floor. With nothing over 2ft, the only other consideration would be your climbing mechanism/being closer to the SWITCH RUNG, but that is, like everything else, design dependent. It doesn’t seem that there would be any reason to even be near 48in in height.
In the case that your team does want to be able to access the SCALE, the decision would be somewhat more complex. You might want to start by thinking about what manipulator type you plan to/can use. If you are using some sort of extensible system that is going to be allowing you to reach the maximum height of the SCALE from your starting position (i.e. your robot will grow vertically), then it might be easier for you to simply shorten the starting configuration height of your robot and grow further – if you decide that the maneuverability of going underneath the SCALE is actually useful.
Overall, and regardless of whether or not you plan to be able to reach the SCALE, the ability to travel through that part of the NULL ZONE underneath the SCALE seems to be of limited or situational use. It’s possible that you might have a robot that sits at the SCALE the entire time, and wants to be ‘fed’ cubes – then, being able to travel in front of said robot might be useful.
tl;dr situational utility that ultimately comes down to design decisions
Thank you all for the feedback. But we were looking at it more from a strategy perspective. Basically, we wanted to know what you guys thought about adding another height restraint (4 feet) to our robot to enable us to go underneath the scale at any time, widening that driving lane by 2 feet. Or do we need to not worry about the tradeoff? Another concern of ours is that we’ll clothesline ourselves on the scale (or crash into the scale) if we’re too tall and our drivers try to drive underneath by accident or we are shoved by another robot. Is that concern legitimate, or are we over-thinking all of this?
It is a concern, but is generally avoidable with good drive practice. If you want to take the extra step to be safe, you have my blessing!
What I believe it comes down to is what you see yourselves doing within the game. It’s not terribly difficult (dependent on your resources) to build a mechanism that can extend and retract above and below 48" as needed or build a static mechanism that always sits below 48". But if you don’t see yourselves traversing the length on the field that often then there isn’t any need to spend extra resources/time or limit yourself in such a way.
Also, 6 feet of space will be easily drivable if you have a well practiced drive team. At most you robot is 33" wide (49" if you have a mechanism extended to the full length on one side). That’s less than half of the space provided.
Beyond that, even if you do choose to build a robot taller than 48" tall, you should be fine so long as you are not top heavy and you don’t run into the scale at full speed.
So I suppose what I am trying to say is that you should weigh your pros and cons and decide what you want to do.
Ok, thank you all for the advice! We’ll weigh the pros and cons and make our decision from there.