Ok, so say I’m wrong and attaching was legal. And I actually competed this year, building a different robot than what I planned. It would have the same concept just designing was a little harder when things didnt works so nicely for “locking”. What this robot was going to do was lock onto the center portion where the gates rest using a piston and mechancial latch that would be insanely protected to it doesn’t even scratch the field.
After that An elastic elevator would go up, and an 8 foot telescoping arm would then deploy blocking all the goals on the opposing alliance side of the field, but not only that but raising their goals by 10 inches. Thus rendering the opposing alliance limited to ~14 points with a doubler in perfect circumstances.
What the design ended up being was everything had specific motors and the robot could transport 14 objects at once. It would move all the preloads in auton and then set up where the major defense started. However instead of “locking” it had two pnuematic arms that would swing 180 degrees and rest inside the goals using the field as a counter balance of the 8 foot 4 stage telescoping arm.
Either way the robot would have worked in theory but in application we were skeptical. But if you see where locking would have helped this robot then you see why I would be a little but bothered that other teams got away with forms of locking even if it couldbe undone. The system I had come up with was a much safer mechanism and wouldnt have damaged the field and was insanely controllable. Just a piston up and down.
Which is a fault of the inspectors then, as an inspector I know there is a question saying “there is nothing on your robot to intenionally damage the field” In which case if you were attaching to the field… They would have not passed in an inspection from me because of this:
And If I had competed against someone who had a mechanism who did this as a ref student or another inspector, I would have imediately called them in for reinspection. And keep in mind there were not really any robot changes to the College game, Its the same “plastic block custom electronics” jazz even if it was asking in a college forum it still applies in HS and MS.
I hope that my reasoning is logical and not insane.
End Rant
- Andrew