Just starting a thread for ideas on safety measures with these hard balls being thrown, because you know, as much as I love getting a concussion…
Anyways one of my ideas was to have a sort of verification button that has to be pressed on the partner control to shoot. This could also help make certain the driver is lined up before he misses a shot.
the balls can’t possibly be launched so hard as to seriously injure anyone, can they? the biggest safety hazard of this year will be working with high-velocity flywheels, and possibly eating too many waffles.
I don’t know but I feel like it’s something that shouldn’t be tested
Eating too many waffles could be bad, I mean they’re hard plastic, you’ll get worse than cavities if you sink your teeth into one. I would be concerned for your general health if you could shove something nine inches in diameter through your mouth and down your throat.
But in all seriousness, the difference between the balls in NBN and this is year was that the NBN balls were squishy and made of foam. The hard plastic ones are going to hurt a lot more if they hit someone. I personally don’t think it’s going to be a problem because most of the balls are going to be aimed at the flags, which have the net behind it.
I remember in nbn a guy on 8000 had a ball launched at his head during worlds. He barley flinched.
Hello,
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to play with these balls yet, but these balls are much harder than those balls. I think balls in the face could be a serious concern.
-Sal
This is about the same as a wiffle ball to the face. I think we will be ok
No necessarily. They are not as light as you think. Along with that, the balls have a thin line of plastic that goes around it that can definitely cause a cut if it hits the face at a fairly high speed. Personally, I feel that having common sense (not shooting the balls out of the field) and just wearing safety glasses should suffice.
As long as people are aiming where they can score we shouldn’t have any problems.
My worry is with all the ramming in turning point that might not necessarily be true.
As long as they were aiming in that general area it should be fine. In a few circumstances the balls might be deflected by other robots but besides that is should be fine.
Seeing this thread cracks me up. Sure, you might get a little dazzled if you’re hit by a ball unexpectedly, but it’s very unlikely that you’d get a concussion. (I crashed going ~40 mph while skiing, and I only got a MINOR concussion, so y’all are safe)
I doubt these balls could cause injuries, but the launchers could. And so could the lifts.
The biggest thing with any gearbox, especially one going stupidly fast, is it sucks in your fingers. Keep your hands away from the gearbox while it’s spinning, even if it’s slowing down after launching a ball. Make sure the robot is totally off (not just the flywheel is turned off) before you put your hands in there. And if you have long hair, be really cautious about tying your hair back in a ponytail or a bun before you lean down to work on the flywheel. If you get your hair caught, not only will it tear your hair out, but it will suck your face towards the flywheel.
Punchers and catapults can be dangerous, but much less so. The biggest thing with these launchers is just not to stick your face in the area where the balls get shot 
Pretty simple.
With lifts, make sure if you’re lifting them manually that you keep your hands away from the joints. One of the stupidest injury I’ve ever gotten from robotics came from pinching my finger between two c channels on my dr4b last season. Also, as obvious as this sounds, don’t stick your face right over the dr4b when the robot is on. Recipe for disaster 
A lot of these things sound childish or obvious, but it’s really easy to do something stupid and hurt yourself. A friend of mine cut himself twice on the same day with the same flywheel in almost exactly the same way Don’t be that guy.
@Anomaly makes a host of good points.
Personally, I am not that worried about a ball hitting me in the face, as a ref or a competitor, due to the fact that there is a net behind the flags which should prevent a large majority of “injuries”
Thanks! And even if the balls did miss the net, they probably wouldn’t cause a problem. Plastic balls going under 10 mph aren’t going to kill anyone. It’s not like they’re going at terminal velocity
Lol. If they did, it would be a statistical anomaly
During NBN, we had a gal with longer hair get her hair caught in the launcher. It was a tough 5-10 minutes, as it pulled real hard.