Robot Arm C

[AlterNSO]

I hope I’m not posting this too late but as a coach I feel like the height thing would be a huge safety issue. (Not for my team as we will be concentrating on getting all the points for most of the season.) I think the idea of holding metal components 3+ meters (someone can correct me if that is higher than possible) is dangerous if those components fail. You could have sharp metal pieces falling and if they break violently given an initial velocity. I just want to make sure someone has considered the safety aspect.

[hqureshi]

I think that a better tie breaker would be the amount of time taken to complete the tasks, and any time left would be added to the points.

[twototwenty]

I think that a better tie breaker would be the amount of time taken to complete the tasks, and any time left would be added to the points.

Since leaving tiebreaking to time means ties are broken by, in some cases, a fraction of a second, this approach in my opinion is not as good as other methods, because since most teams are controlling thier robot in competition, each run time is going to vary by several seconds, and ties are broken more by luck than by an attribute of one arm being better than the same attribute of another arm.

[hqureshi]

Yes, that does make sense, but at least it is more objective than using technical drawings as a tiebreaker which depends on what the judges think about them, and that makes it subjective. I found that very annoying especially in Protein Modeling.

[blazer]

I think that a better tie breaker would be the amount of time taken to complete the tasks, and any time left would be added to the points.

If the duration of run were to be incorporated into the tie breaker, I could only see it as a second tie breaker, behind number of motors. If it were the first tie breaker, we would see the emergence of ultra expensive dual arm robots that could essentially complete the tasks in half the time. If it were a second tie breaker, however, it would only be differentiating the perfect-scoring four motor robots at nationals and perhaps a couple of state tournaments. In my opinion, there would be a large enough difference in run time between these robots to justify the tiebreaker. It wouldn't be trivial; the duration would be proportional to how good of a robot the team has, how efficient their strategy is, and how much they have practiced.

[twototwenty]

The time, true, is in no way trivial and certainly reflects a part of the team's ability, but it does vary from run to run, and when you get to higher levels of competition at which point many teams have very fast arms, this variance would be significant. Although time as a method of determining placement works fine for things like the aviation events, I personally feel that, for an event like robot arm, a type of variable scoring such a the height score discussed earlier would be a better way of ensuring that there are far fewer ties.

[JimY]

So, any word from anyone on what the proposed rule changes were last weak at the summer institute? Playing field size change? Object change? etc?