Okay, another question. While I believe that standing on top of a robot to score would be against the rules, merely riding up over another robot during a pushing match would fulfill the
Transient conditions that may cause a diagonal dimension of the robot to momentarily exceed the 60” height restriction – such as during a tipover or when climbing onto the ALLIANCE PLATFORM – are not subject to this rule.
part of <G16> right?
I would be inclined to agree, but I think these are the types of interpretation questions that need official Q&A responses. We can discuss this till we are blue in the face (as it appears I already have) but it won’t mean anything until we get the “official” ruling.
I think its risky to read things into the rules that are not there. In this case Im not talking about the difficultys of technical writing.
Extend means extend. If I say I can extend my head so I am 8 feet tall, then I stand on a ladder, you will laugh at me.
If FIRST means that no robot shall break the horizontal plane X feet above the floor for any reason, then they would have said that.
If you are not allowed to extend, that does not mean you cannot jump, hop, float, fly, toss a ball in the air, send up a blast of air… or climb
adding (what is not there) to the rules will limit the creativity of the teams coming up with unique ideas.
I totally agree (with your first sentence). While I am inclined to agree that the restriction should be on Robot size, I would prefer to wait for a clarification from Q&A. It seems strange to me that the floor and platform was referenced (“Maximum Height - A ROBOT may not extend above 60” above the floor or the ALLIANCE PLATFORM in a stable configuration at any time during a match…”) as opposed to just stating the maximum height OF THE ROBOT cannot exceed 60".
To make all ten balls from autonmous mode without moving your robot from the initial position into the top green goal for 30 points should be this year’s challenge, 30 feet at a maximum speed of 25mph of so, with it being 8 feet 6 inches or so in the middle of that ring, can’t wait for a great year, see all of you who are going to the UTC, can’t miss me, i’ll be the one sticking out of the crowd.
In my opinion, it is impossible to score 10 balls in 10 sec. For a ball to be scored, it must exit the chute: “<G05> In order for a ball to score, it must enter the goal and exit via the exit chute…” this takes anywhere between 1 and 3 sec. (with multiple balls).
This leaves you with 7 seconds to shoot all of the balls (7/10ths of a sec. per ball). To shoot more than one ball per second using a CIM to drive two 8" wheels a few thousand rpm a flywheel is required. To bring your shooter up to speed it takes around 3 seconds.
The final total is 4-6 seconds to shoot 10 balls (2/5-3/5ths of a sec. per ball). Anyone who can shoot and score all 10 balls in 4 seconds autonomously deserves more than an award.
FIRS answered a question in the Q & A stating that a ball will be scored in the center goal as long as it left the robot before time expired, just like a buzzer half-court shot in basketball (this only applies to the center goal, corner goals will be shut off as soon as time expires). So you have 7 seconds subtracting the ramp-up.
shooting on the run
TO shoot the 10 allowed balls at the beginning of the autonomous period all in the center goal in the allowed time limit.
Why would you need to “find and lock onto your target” at match start? All distances and angles are perfectly known to you, unless you had a launcher tilt system that couldn’t hold its preset angle when its drive motor was disabled.
If you had a repeatable method of setting your robot’s orientation and launcher tilt angle in the starting box, I imagine your only limitation would be the time it takes to spin up your launcher to launch velocity.
Launch 10 balls into the center goal from the starting position in autonomous.
That’s right, no moving of the chassis. Just aim and fire.
How about one bot collecting and holding all 80 balls on the playing field? That would be quite interesting to see.
The problem with that is since any ball you score is up to the opponent to put back into the field, the only real feasible way to achieve that is you don’t score any points after autonomous mode. And by the time you have all the balls, probably around the last quarter if ever, they will just put all three of their robots defending your one robot that has balls, making it impossible to score those 80 balls, which most likely means you lose 
As the weeks go by and the physics of the game sinks in, I think the real magic trick is going to be finding a way to guard or block the center goal, parked infront of it (not chasing robots around to block their shots).
I notice the rules say you cannot extend in a ‘stable configuration’ above a certain height - does that mean you could take swipes at a ball in flight, if your flailing arms are not ‘stable’ ?
Could you have a bot with a big sticky tongue that shoots out and snatches balls out of the air, like flys?
**<G16>
Maximum Height ** - A ROBOT may not extend above 60” above the floor or the ALLIANCE PLATFORM in a stable configuration at any time during a match…
I think the rule means that its ok if you exceed the height limit if an accident happens and your robot flips over and the diagonals goes over 5 feet.
Other wise the height rule pretty much says you cannot block the goal or other robot’s firing mechanism. Well unless their shooter is not placed at the max height, which I doubt since that would make their shooter very easily blocked.
The closest thing I’ve heard about interfering with a shooter other than just plain collision of robots is using pneumatics to blow air in front of opponent shooters to offset the flight path of the launched ball. However I’m not entirely sure this is legal so you probably should check on that. Also since you have to take time to recompress air it will not be consistant.
Don’t forget that the hypothetical robot holding all 80 balls has 2 partner robots to help “move” the opposing robots out of the way. Certainly you have a valid point, but I do believe that hording and scoring late is going to be a powerful strategy.
Impossible, eh? Too long to spin up? Well then, I’ll make a 2 Big CIM/2 Little CIM/2 FP/Van Door/Globe/Window Motor Shooter that can spin up in .1 seconds and shoot 60 balls per second!
I guess the point I’m trying to make is nothing is impossible. Its just… some thing are very hard.
Get most points in both center and corner goals. :eek: don’t think anyone can multitask that much
How about scoring five out of ten balls in the center goal from the starting position during autonomous
What about scoring all 10? I think its possible, yet difficult…for some…