Hello again forums! It’s been a few months since I’ve been here, more because I’ve moved on from high school and therefore VEX than anything.
But two of my good friends haven’t. So, as a bystander watching their chats in a discord server, ideas have been mulling around. One of the more prominent ones involves “docking” (as I’ll refer to it), or carrying around, a mobile goal. This allows you to potentially hoard many cones at once and intake them very quickly. But among the few forum posts and prototypes (one I like), an idea I like hasn’t yet surfaced. So to the LEGO’s I went. I came up with a few intake designs, with varying degrees of complexity and versatility; some are even passive and hold up well enough for further development. If you guys want, I can upload some videos.
I’d just like to open a serious thread for this idea and the mechanics behind it, as apposed to a strategy thread. I think with sufficient development, mobile goal docking can be taken very far. What are your guys’ thoughts on the mechanical side of docking?
The idea has actually been discussed a lot here. Rather than not surfacing, the prevailing opinion here is that that will be the dominant strategy. It’s just that no matter what you do, you’ll have to pick up cones and lift them high, so more of the construction we’ve seen so far has been focused on the cones.
I really like the ratchet idea, but I’m worried that the fast direction change required to disengage the intake would knock over any stack greter than 7 cones tall or so. Also, wouldn’t it contact the 20 point zone bar thusly making it unable to score in that zone?
Overall, I still think it’s a good idea and, with a couple design modifications, might be a really competitive option for picking up the mobile goals.
All you would need to combat this is enlarge the ratchet and let the mobile goal raise farther. Making that with LEGOS just isn’t worth the effort as you understand the principle already.
Nope. It doesn’t use motors either.
I’ll check around the forums and see if this can be remedied passively.
Just a thought, you could take advantage of the fact that it hits the pipe and use the contact from pushing against the pipe to release the ratchet. You might have something like this crude ASCII drawing:
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The top row of underscores functions as a guard to prevent accidental release from hitting the field perimeter or something, similar to how lots of teams with passive tension releases for starstruck had guards. Once you push against the pipe, the pipe bar mechanism would be pushed inward, allowing for the ratchet to release and the mogo to slide down.
Just a thought I had upon first taking a look at this, I’m sure there’s probably another way to do it passively.
I’ve got a passive mobile base intake that I’ll reveal before Monday. It has some flaws due to poor build quality, and could definitely use some tuning, but it’s a great proof of concept.
I don’t think you understand what I meant. When I asked if it would contact the 20 point bar, I meant after it was deposited into the zone. Once the mobile goal was set down, how do you get the intake back out of the zone without tipping over the mobile goal? My team has been brainstorming ways that don’t involve sticking prongs underneath the goal because there isn’t enough room (at least according to the CAD files of the field) to get any pronged intake back out of the 20 point once it has deposited the mobile goal. Unless I’m missing something…
