but the only reason you can do that last year was because you cannot entangle the other alliance (there was a wall)
but since both alliances can move freely around the field this yr, that would DEFINITELY cross the entanglement rule
There wasn’t an emcee yelling “GIVE [254F] AN AWARD,” if you catch my drift ;]
Here is a video of the wall half of 254F. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig3qtA2d1NI
The reason that the wall idea was scrapped was that the linear sliders weighed too much for VEX parts to easily handle. Every time we expanded the wall, the linear sliders bent a couple of inches from the middle to the end.
As John implied, the wall part of 254F wasn’t powered by motors. Instead, a large amount of rubberbands controlled by pneumatic actuators drove the wall across the field, folded the wall over, and expanded the arm.
As one of the main builders of 254F, I was amazed to see 76 successfully build a detachable robot, although I would have enjoyed seeing more teams take that approach, because the ability to do that was unique to Clean Sweep.
PICS NAO! As I, like penguinfrk was stuck running around in math and also missed out on looking at all the major teams (44, 254, 10, etc) that I really wanted to look at.
And by the way kendalls, if you were going to build a dedicated wall extreme width was not the way to go. The max width on the wall and I mean max would be 3 feet, anything more then that would be a waste and very heavy but looks epic cool. As long as you can strafe faster then them you don’t need the extra width.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teNYfV8F-rs very cool robot, unfortunately didn’t works half the time, but VERY cool to watch when it did!
76 was amazing!! It was great to watch the crowd when they drove up to the wall, and then this little guy comes running out from underneath an enormous robot…
I’m crying inside because I didn’t see them in person. That’s just crazy. Would have been devastating if it was more reliable. (2 launches per match = killer)
hey it was the match we played with them! 
i see myself! 
they could have three “shots”
but since they didnt latch onto the wall properly, their whole robot flipped
it was good teamwork though
since we were being blocked, we just “loaded them up” as karthik says
Haha yes I noticed, we played with them in a match too, only lost by 6 points I believe, was pretty close, also I don’t think they ever got more than 1 shot per match, at least I never saw it get 2 or 3.
It would have been better if they didn’t need to brace against the wall… maybe have some kind of bar that dropped out at an angle, and locked, and rested half an inch above the ground?
but the bar would literally spike a hole into the foam
(thats the reason they added the latch)
Team 44 had an expanding chassis at their first competition. This inspired two of our teams to also have expanding chassis. We did not copy them, but their idea of a larger chassis to hold more balls inspired us to do the same.
There is a very good reason that they were never copied. They are in Massachusetts, not California. The matches in MA are rarely taped, and when they went to Maine for a tournament, the few videos that did make it onto Youtube were not going to cause anyone to make a “screw for screw” copy. (the first part of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2BuWM3Zv8c)
The Green Eggs came to every competition with a robot that was significantly better than their previous robot. They did not use a robot that could effectively score in goals in competition until the World Championships.
Any team can learn a lot by watching them.
Yes, it was a very different design that first competition in October from what the team ended up with in April, but it was fun to watch expand at the start of that very first match. (youtube video of Fred III, Version 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTxPoE7-4IE )
It was very interesting to see how your teams approached the challenge of designing an expanding chassis.
umm
hey green egg can you post or post links to some pics of your robot?
i didnt really get to see it and judging by everyones comments, you are beast
esp the foldout drive design
thx
Murdomeek,
Believe it or not, we don’t have any good pictures of the latest version of the robot. After the team takes some nice pics when they meet I’ll post some here in the Vex forum.
Well, you can’t see it very well, but heres a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5vB5bl6Ug0
I have been reading some of these posts about people who hate copiers, and purely from an engineering standpoint, companies and design teams copy each other all the time. But the EXPAND on ideas. This is the key to engineering. It is about seeing a problem, creating a design and testing it, if it fails then you try again, if it is a recurring problem you look to other designs for inspiration and sometimes that leads to similar copies. Because if you want to argue about things being similar, then look at car designs for 4 door cars in the past 20 years. VERY SIMILAR. To be honest teams should feel honored to have someone think their design is good enough to copy, but also have faith in their own design an abilities to win.
Genius is not something you posses, its something that posses you!
Yes, and if a team copies your robot but finds a way to make it better, then they are obviously the better team. An advantage you get is you have already found all of the problems and probably worked around them/found solutions, and since you built it first you will always be one step ahead of the copiers. (If you are truly better than them and continue to improve on your design.)
~Jordan
I think with the new award, it will appease innovative teams some… but i know from experience that it is very depressing to lose to a robot that is a basic copy of yours…
A few years ago, my team made it too the divisional semi-finals in the FTC World Championship, only to be eliminated… The winners of that year were a practical copy of ours, only they did it better… I’m fine with that, but it would have been nice to win an award for coming up with the idea first…
But then again, it’s almost impossibly hard to trace an idea to it’s origin… I know I have incredible difficulty coming up with original ideas, so I’m perfectly fine with other teams copying my robots…
Just as long as they give me credit…
just make sure you are “better” and stay “ahead” this year