Failed random ideas

Perhaps somebody had some really random ideas on your team that would probably never work, or did work but had no real use, but were interesting concepts. Post them here!

To start off

at the start of the year, while we were designing, we thought about building a 18x18x18 bot with a crane like arm that we could essentially play “crane game” with cubes instead of stuffed animals, all from the top of the ramp in the middle.

A flag waver attached to drive train so whenever our bot moved it would wave the flag. Very cool, but unfortunately was removed as part of lightening.

Team 575 has its flag holders mounted on the drive sprockets for its cube lifters. Whenever the cube lifters are operating, the flags wave in circles.

Team 420 has decided to build a robot for the Washington tournament. I’m sworn to secrecy, but they are planning a defensive strategy that will send people scrambling for the rule books to see if it is legal. I’m waiting with some anxiety to see if they can pull it off.

One of our teams was talking about a folding robot that would expand to cover the platform, suck up all the cubes on the top, and dole them out to its alliance partner. Then they decided to build something drivable.

For team 420, if referees have to scramble for the rule book, I can promise you it’s illegal. But many things in elevation are up to the referee(s).
But all I can think of for a robot is one that takes the cubes out of a goal, consumes a robot, or go out of the field. Taking the cubes out is the only thing that is legal. Hopefully after the tournament, you could tell us what the secret is?

We had a idea to get all of the other teams cubes and launch them off the field.
We created a 18X18X18 robot box, and all of the cubes were sent directly into the box. We didn’t know of the rule that you are not allowed to have the cubes pinned in some way that we had it, and also, this is a really stupid idea. It needed to be heavier than we thought, for it was a pure metal box.

catapult

Nuff said :cool:

What rule makes consuming a robot illegal? Provided you’re not lifting the opposing robot off the ground or intentionally intangling yourself with it.

Technically, it’s not even against the rules as long as you don’t pin the other robot against a field element or tip it.

or a box that covers the goal once you’ve scored the last in that goal :slight_smile: