What would you do...

FIRST General Forum
1

…if they doubled the max size and weight of the robots for next year?

2
  • Rejoice
  • Panic
    *]Use all of it, but make the robot so it can fit through a standard doorway (or whatever doorway was available).
    You figure out which comes first.
3

Start looking for a new robot competition. The problems with this extreme of a size change:

  • Robots won’t fit through doors
  • Robots won’t be liftable by 2 average humans
  • There would be approximately 42% less maneuvering room on the field. (Complete guess, but come on, that’s huge.)
  • Pit spaces would be approximately 57% smaller. (See above)
  • Even bigger shipping expenses and overages. How many of you actually make it under 400 lbs as it is? How likely is it when your robot is now 50% or more of your weight budget?
  • Do YOU want a 250 lb oversize soda machine careening around your shop? I saw that commercial and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
4

If they did that…
the world would implode

5

Interesting post that our team actually brought up once this year.
But, let’s remember something. Anytime you make a major change like that, it amounts to cost. The current playing field setup might have to change, robot KOP might have to go through a major overhaul costing $$$$, etc. as examples.
I bet our whole team that the robot design dimension was going to stay at 28 x 38 this year before construction began simply on that rationale.

6

depends on the game, but would make the robot ridiculously awesome because of the lack of weight restriction.

7

We would also need more power, maybe a 24 V battery and more powerful motors.

I would probably use the weight but not the size. I have always wanted to make a drive system like the one on the packbot so I probably would just for the heck of it. :smiley:

8

awesome as this is, i kinda drove one of these :]
our robotics class last year went to a military…thing. name=am i allowed to say??? haha

and they had 5 different vehicle/robots/awesomness to show and 2 automated gun turrets and an automatic shotgun mounted to one of the robots.

very fun. for me atleast (after a 5 hour talk with their lead engineer) VERY educating.

good idea. more life like scenario. arent going to see a 120lb 'bot scoping out a new planet earth for the potential survival of humankind

butttt…plus one on all the problems it would bring. plus one on incredibly expensive and wayyy to inconvenient for all. safety concerns would skyrocket.

9

I would actually like to see FIRST go in the other direction, that is half the size and half the weight.

I think that this is what would really make the competition more interesting by forcing teams to become more aware of what they were doing with their materials and space as well as making more compact and hopefully complicated robots.

Another plus of this would be that smaller robots would allow for more movement on the field or possibly more teams competing at once? With FIRST growing in popularity and the number of matches each team gets at a regional shrinking i think that this would be a nice way to increase playing time.

just my $.02

Simon