Is a tether bot viable for this years competition? I saw some discussion about it and wanted to know whether it was viable/worth it and what advantages it has over a more traditional bot.
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The easiest thing for you to do is to make a list of advantages and disadvantages you might see with each. Take the two design approaches that you would have for each, and see how it would turn out, and which one you think would be more effective.
you mean like a small bot tethered to another small bot?
No, he means design both a normal and a tether bot, and weigh the pros and cons of each.
but what is a tether bot
I was think more of a smaller cube bot on a flat, larger bot and the small one drives off at the beginning.
thats what i thought too but just confirming
A good example is “Apophis” from toss up.
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Yeah, I saw that robot and that is what kinda led me into thinking that this could work for this competition, but I am not sure if something like that could score enough to make it worth it.
I mean if you make a good lift on it you could probably score a good amount of points.
Edit: you could even use it to distract the other robot and/or block them with your tether.
Considering the towers that are spread across the field, the tether cable/linkage will get blocked or entangled with the towers as the robots move around.
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That is one of the main downsides to having a tether bot, if you and your teammate don’t communicate well and think ahead, you could easily get stuck and twisted up in the towers.
There are ways to get around this - but none of them are super good.
another thing to add is with a motor limit of 8, tetherbots will be especially difficult. you would have to do 2 robots with something like 2 motor drive, 1 motor lift, 1 motor intake.
one way to solve the issue with tangled tethers could be to have your brain, battery, and radio on a stationary plate at the starting position, and have two tetherbots that start on the plate and drive off at the start. that way each driver has only to be mindful of their tether, not the other bots.
What is the ruling on how the tether would have to be created? Does it have to be made of metal, or could I just have a tube connecting the wires between the two robots? Just as a side note, I think if you were to do this, you should have a stationary arm that can stack cubes and the actual moving robot just to push cubes towards arm.
You’d almost definitely want something strong around your wires, I’d probably use something to contain the wires, and have something strong around that, or maybe something that does both things. (Wire loom?)
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It’s so much harder with V5 than with Cortex. The smart cables are less flexible and whilst cable management is theoretically easier, the tether will be bigger and more of an entanglement risk.
As mentioned, the 8 motor limit of V5 also makes it less attractive.
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Guys… let’s face the facts: a tether bot is just not a good option for this game. You could probably get it to work, but just making a basic offensive bot has always been the best way to go, and will always.
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I beg your pardon
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I think we may have a chance at seeing some tetherbots for vexu, considering there’s no motor limit. I sure hope so, they’re cool to watch