I’m curious if robots that pass through the trench with tight clearance will run into a jam if they run over a Power Cell that is directly under the Control Panel. Anyone test this yet?
I would imagine you would have to barley have any clearance for this to happen, at that point I would imagine on a six wheel wcd if you hard accelerated under it you would clip the top.
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Also troublesome could be a power cell, or multiple power cells, that are right in front of the trench, lifting a robot high enough to hit the top edge of the trench or control panel.
Maybe this will be this year’s Tortuga Contest from @Joe_Johnson?
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Based on our testing, a single power cell has little affect on the robot being they are so soft. However, I can see multiple power cells causing the aforementioned issues, including getting stuck under the trench. I think this will be an extremely rare occurrence, though.
Hmmm. Didn’t think about being in a sandwich like that…
Our limited testing showed that moving at a high speed caused the power cells to bounce off of the bumpers. Moving slow caused the cells to get caught. That said we plan to have intake with deflector deployed whenever possible while driving on the field to avoid power cell + bumper issues.
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Since we’ll only have about 1 3/4" of clearance under our bumpers, I don’t really see this as a problem. We’ll test it, of course, but in all likelihood the PC will just bounce off the bumper, not go under it. A PC is 7" diameter, so the center that strikes the bumper will be well above the bottom edge. These balls are not as squishy as the cargo last year, so I expect them to stay out from under the robot in these conditions.
Be very careful with this assumption. I would encourage you to test it. We found bumper material made a difference.
From our tests it wasn’t about where the ball hit on the bumpers it was will the ball “stick” to them and get rolled under or will it be able to still rotate when in contact with them and get pushed away.
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You would be surprised how easy it is to roll a ball under your bumper.
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Looks like a good “pay attention to Power Cells in the trench, and run your intake while you go through to scoop 'em up en route” situation.
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I mentioned this in the other thread, but I think maybe the vinyl numbers on the bumpers in your test video might be sticking to the ball.
We found that only 1" of clearance still led to our bumpers gobbling up power cells at low speed.
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Hmm… Now that you mention this do you think that running an intake in the reverse direction would throw the ball out of the way?
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uh…you didn’t do this test on kickoff day?
hmmm…
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That may be a problem for teams that shoot out one side and pick up on the other. We will see.
In 2016, we watched a bot from the opposing alliance come flying over one of the Defenses and land on top of a Boulder. The Boulder was pretty much centered on the robot so only one wheel barely touched the carpet. It spent over half the match slowly pirouetting while our alliance went about it’s business. Our robots made sure not to bump it off the Boulder. It was pretty comical to watch. Based on what @jdaming and his team has found and a few other videos, I would not be surprised to see something like this, or what the OP is speculating, to happen at least a few times.
It happened last year with the huge Cargo balls…it’s gonna be a real mess this year. Be prepared.
I think we’re going to have to see what happens when we drive with our intake down and running backward…
that’s our plan…
also ours