This seems particularly relevant to teams designing how fast their robots can shoot:
The capacity of the Low Efficiency GOAL is seventy (70) FUEL. The capacity of the High Efficiency GOAL is one-hundred and fifty (150) FUEL. FUEL that exceeds GOAL capacities will fall back on to the FIELD.
Love this:
Bumpers Included:
Seriously, R3 says bumpers are included in overall robot size this season. For real.
Drawing Omissions:
This year, certain field equipment drawings are excluded because we don’t believe they are relevant to a robot’s interaction with the field, and they may provide a solution to an element of the game challenge.
Interesting concept to hide the details about this for the first 6 weeks. But how do they stop people from looking in the next 7 weeks and making changes?
Doesn’t the second half of this sentence contradict the first half? If they aren’t relevant to robot interaction then how can they provide a solution to an element of the game challenge.
Emphasis mine on the quote. The only way this sentence makes sense is if the “solution to an element of the game challenge” is in relation to human interaction rather then robot interaction, which I find troublesome.
Drawing Omissions:
This year, certain field equipment drawings are excluded because we don’t believe they are relevant to a robot’s interaction with the field, and they may provide a solution to an element of the game challenge.
Field drawing providing a solution? Magazine for a shooter? Conveyor lift to load the shooter?
The two boilers are giant fuel hoppers and the GDC has designed a system to remove ALL fuels from these hoppers at a rate of 5 per second. In a controlled enough fashion to accurately count them. I guarantee you there are teams that would LOVE to have details of this design so they can iterate on it and shave weeks off their design time.
And then there’s the majority of us who just want to make sure we’re practicing in as close to real conditions as possible and want to make sure we know how the sorter/counter affects that.
I’m pretty sure this is FIRST signaling they’re not confident their design works yet and they don’t want a ton of people complaining when they build said design and it isn’t robust.
H15. A pre-populated GEAR may not be removed from its AXLE.
Violation: RED CARD.
Darn! This was gonna be my Q&A question.
Count me as one of those people that wants to know how FIRST’s system works so I can copy it :). Of course, the boilers have a rather large footprint, and there’s no guarantee that it can be effectively scaled down within a robot.
This sounds about right.
If this is what the statement is referring to (which I believe it is) and it is something I would possibly want to build on my robot then it is effecting robot interaction.
Like Cory said, being able to build an accurate representation of the field is what most teams would like to get out of the drawings.
Also, off the top of my head, I can think of 33 from 2006 who had a similar spinning hopper similar to the boiler. Some info on their design is in the 2006 Design book that was published (similar to the ones that came in the kit last year about 2015 for those not around in 2006).
They saved you (and the Q&A people) the trouble. That’s a good thing.
Just a warning: There is a link to the “manual” on the Q&A Site, however it appears as though it is not updated with the team update. (As of this post anyway.)
The low efficiency boiler, with a cap of only 70 fuel, looks less and less appealing as time goes on.
Did it ever look appealing?
Pretty sure they mean it gets more efficient as more balls enter since less balls are bouncing around inside and more balls are there to find their way into the slots.
Gotcha that makes sense.
Are there any VR compatible images of the field this year? The ones last year offered such a great experience for those of us who don’t have the opportunity to see a real field until competition.
It really helped us get a feel for what the field looks like and some of the restrictions we will face when we get there (vision from driver station, little things we can’t make out from tour video, drawings, and CAD, etc) / its just cool to virtually stand on the new FRC field.
Re: Low efficiency goal.
It sure is appealing to teams who aren’t confident in a high goal shooter. I’d take a reliable low goal dump truck over an un-reliable high goal shooter any day.
Oh, and 70 fuel capacity, at 5 fuel emptied per second means 14 seconds to empty the low goal and get 7 points with 7/9 of the next point scored. So, if you refilled it the moment it emptied, that means you get 8 trips in the match and a total of 62 points. Well coordinated low goal dumpers can still get an RP. And, with a good high goal shooter, they can also overwhelm the bins pretty fast too.