As head ref, I am looking through the game manual trying to identify potential headaches in advance. My son’s team skips the hero bot but I may ask them to build it to test the 24" horizontal expansion rule. I have no idea of the examples provided in the game manual are true, but I really hope “Flop” is not capable of breaking the horizontal expansion rule. Most of my inspection headaches for Mix-And-Match came from misunderstandings around horizontal expansion issues for all the various 180 bots. If the Hero Bot can break the rules I will have another headache to contend with, as novice, 8-10 year olds will not understand why they are breaking the rules when they are just building what the instructions tell them to do.
Your question is unclear.
Basically he’s asking has anyone got Flop built and whether they can confirm whether or not Flop actually stays within the 24" horizontal expansion limit.
(e.g. is the hero bot going to be an issue this year at inspection for those who haven’t modified it)
My Year 6’s are working on building it.
They’ll likely take a week or so on it.
Once they’re done if no one else can confirm before then I can let you know.
I did not build the hero bot, but we can estimate using clues in the picture. Because 2 holes is equivalent to 1 inch, the 2x18 on the drivetrain is 9” long. By measuring 4” and 1” on the drivetrain, we can slowly add up the lengths until the end of the robot. After I added them up, I ended up with (about) 24.75 inches, or just under 25”. So, according to my measurements, this orientation (including a chain flap sticking out) is barely out of size. This is probably unreliable though, so before you spread this you should measure it in real life.
(9+4+4+4+1+1+1+(about)0.75)= 24.75
24.75 > 24
I built the hero bot, and yes, it does expand past 24". It also breaks the bumper sensor mount really, really easily.
Thank you! I did see that bump sensor mount and thought maybe it was there to prevent the 180 bar from traveling too far, in addition to whatever teams wish to use the bump function for. My 5th grade son looked over the bot and will skip it, although he did like parts of it. He mostly liked the 10:1 compound gearing on that long arm with all the intake weight at the end of the end. . I pointed out the possible length problem to him and he had several immediate solutions, both mechanical and coding. Will be fun to see how kids who use this bot will modify to stay in spec this season.
As others mentioned it can extend past the 24" so either the GDC will need to expand the max expansion or every team running the hero bot will need to create a limiter to prevent the arm going back that far. (Obviously with the arm right back there the robot tips over anyway due to its balance so you wouldn’t want to extend it back that far even though it can. )
There is a lot of conflicting rules in this years game manual just like this, rubber bands, lube, says one thing in one place, different later in the manual. The QA is going to be flooded the second it opens up in cleaning up the documentation.
The game design committee “benefits” from the large number of “proofreaders” once the first iteration is released. I agree Q&A will be beneficial to help clean things up in time for the first revision. I actually enjoy seeing the evolution of the game and rules over the course of the season as real-world experience accumulates.
This will need changed. I can see a large number of teams showing up at competitions with the hero bot built as is and then finding out they are disqualified. Younger builders are going to be totally turned off of robotics if that happens.
So “during” it can’t get bigger but “after it starts” it can? The word “during” and the phrase “after it starts” both imply the match is happening. The two sentences literally contradict each other.