In the Northeast Showdown signature event that happened recently I saw that a lot of good teams were using forks in the back of their robot to help on defense. How do they work exactly?
Those “forks” are called wedges, they basically lift the wheels of other robots off the ground to make them easier to push. The Purdue SIGBots wiki explains it pretty well: Defensive Mechanisms - BLRS Wiki (purduesigbots.com)
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Are they supposed to be dragging along the ground or just very close?
I was at this comp, I saw the exact bots you were talking about. There was one team that tore up chunks of one of the field, like inch wide chunks and multiple pieces of field tape, but I brought it up to the head ref and the event partner and I don’t think anything actually came of it. I think they’re meant for anti-tipping, especially on faster bots, but the teams I saw with them mostly used them for bullying other robots.
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Definitely not meant for anti-tipping. They should not be hard mounted, and instead on a pivot which would not support the robot in the case of tipping.
They should ideally be just above the ground. It is illegal to purposefully cause damage to the field, so elevating them slightly avoids this. The pivot should also help with this. (aim for as close to the field as possible to get under all robots though)
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Not only are wedges helpful for defense, they can make it easier to get to rollers. If you have a low bot and there is a disc in front of the roller, it can keep you from getting close enough to the wall to spin it. A way to combat this is a wedge that lifts the disc out of the way.
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