Over in the Q&A thread is question about a 2 part robot
There is a video of it playing It splits in 1/2 and runs up to the trough and spreads wings to cover the entire trough.
It’s a pretty cool idea, but illegal. (Trailing cord, entanglement hazard, not using official vex parts or equivalent, etc). But I give them some style points for thinking of it.
If you are the owners/designers/builder of this bot or know about it, can you post some details?
This was a really cool robot to watch… even though it is illegal.
It would be SO annoying if someone blocked your trough(s). I know of a robot that might do that (legally)
It is cool and looks to be well executed (from what I can see in the video).
Foster, if it had been at your recent event do you think it would have passed inspection ? What would be the best way to deal with this type of design if it turns up at another event?
We know it is 6792A, West Oahu Robotics, name plate is clearly seen.
You should bring it to Rolling Meadows.
Hahaha… I don’t have it.
I wish we could have two robots though… I would build a “trough-bot” 
If you were the opponent, could you not get one robot to solely block the scoring robot on the alliance and one robot to score on the high/floor goals? essentially making it a 1v0 game, HOWEVER, if one half was a blocker and one was a scorer… i could see that working
The idea here is that the trough bot actually ends up being a disadvantage when playing against thoughtful opponents. It’s basically 1v2 but the 2 cant score well, but if they send one of their robots to completely block the team of 1 which is easily done, it becomes basically a 1v0. This is almost impossible to accommodate for, and even with the current design a decent team should be able to stop the trough bot by lifting its arm or pushing hard.
One of the biggest problems with the robot in the video is that, in autonomous, you could easily send in one of your robots to stop it from getting into position to put up the second blocker.
Based on that Q&A thread if they just add some metal (C-Channel I would suggest) that folded out and latched straight above the ground it would become legal again. As long as it’s “rigid”, not dragging, and not a risk of entanglement, you should be fine. If it’s a sturdy bar of metal going across, I would not think that’s a risk of entanglement.
-Nick
to the best of my knowledge it used a linear slide to raise and im guess a latching mech that opened the wings. we are having our tournament now and it has been cut down to one bot. the disadvantage was that it was two robots sharing 10 motors so it would either be a pushing fight or yo will be able to push it away to score
An inspector would have seen it split when it ran the autonomous (part of the software check-in). They had instructions to get me on really cool robots, they would have called me to see it. (OTOH I watched all the first round matches so I would have seen it then.) I would have bounced it because of the long cable. (Same reasons Karthik presented)
Later on in the thread is someone saying that had they (the robot) had c-channel between the 1/2’s it would have passed. I would have failed it on the entanglement rule. Now had the C gone up and across at the height of the trough or 18 1/2" up, I would have left it play since the entanglement and floppy cable dragging were resolved. Rigid connections 18 1/2" up should be allowed, but someone needs to ask the formal question in Q&A to get the official statement.
I love VEX. 6 years ago squarebots with a claw for the win, 2013 swarm robots take the gold.
I pretty confident you will see a legal one at Rolling Meadows. That will be the teams second competition, so hopefully most of the bugs will be worked out by then.
Jay
I will be the first at your table, if this is what I think it is it could be dominant.
I think that this is still up in the air as rules change from game to game, but with the assumption that having a single bar at any height under 18.5 inches being ‘illegal’ due to entanglement issues, then most of the wallbot designs last year would have been rendered entirely illegal based on this rule. And as far as I know the rule hasn’t changed to much. But I am open for corrections if need be.