Mouse Trap Vehicle

[baker]

I see on the national site the tentative events for 2010 are listed. Does anybody know how the Mouse Trap Vehicle event might be ran? Will it be distance, time, straight line or a zig-zag course...? Has this been an event before?

[robotman]

the event's goal is to make a mousetrap powered car that will go out ot a certain distance in a straight line and return to th place where it started
this was a trail event at nats
here is the national trail thread
http://www.scioly.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=945

[Dark Sabre]

Yes, it has been a non-trial event before, but that was back before 1996, so I don't have anything from back then . fleet130 might be able to tell you more about what the event was like during its previous stints, but I can't.

I can't speak with any certainty, but as robot said, there's a decent chance it will resemble Out and Back...
Trial Rules: http://soinc.org/sites/default/files/up ... tnback.pdf
Some pictures from Nats: Image Gallery

[baker]

If anyone saw this event, how does the vehicle reverse? Another mouse trap? Springs? Does it come to a stop and then immediately reverse? What was the distance used?

Oh yeah , thank you Dark Saber..I got my answers by looking at the pictures..tx

[fleet130]

fleet130 might be able to tell you more about what the event was like during its previous stints

Unfortunately, someone convinced me to throw away my old rulebooks, so I can't say exactly what the rules were before 1994.

When I mention reasons for changes, it’s important to understand that 10 people could have 10 different reasons for supporting a change. They each walk out thinking the change was solely for their reason!

Mousetrap Vehicle was originally based solely on the distance traveled. The vehicle that traveled farthest won. After a few years it became impossible to find a venue large enough to accommodate the vehicles. The last year under this scoring, our school's team had a vehicle that could travel 4 times the length of a full sized gym.

Sometime in the early 90s, a target distance and predicted time were added. The target distance was originally fixed at 20 meters and the contestants were to predict the time it would take the vehicle to travel an intermediate distance, which was unknown beforehand. Scoring for both time and distance were simply target value minus the error.

Tournament organizers began complaining they had a hard time coming up sites that could accommodate a 20 meter track, so the distance was gradually shortened to 10 meters.

With a fixed known distance, it wasn't long before scores were closely grouped at the top. To spread them out, the unknown target distance was added. This had an added advantage in that it could also be used for the intermediate timed distance.

Along with these changes, the percentage of correctness scoring was added. Originally, both time and distance were worth 100 pts. i.e. [(target-error)/target]*100 This made it possible to have the same maximum score regardless of the target distance/time. Later, the time score multiplier was changed to 50 to reduce the weight of the time score.

I toyed with the concept of Out & Back prior to the 2000 National Tournament at Eastern Washington University. I was never able to come up with a satisfactory (to me) method of determining the vehicle performed the "out" portion accurately. I mentioned the idea to a few people, but eventually abandoned it. Meanwhile someone else came up with the idea independently and has been working to get it accepted.

Exactly what the new event will consist of is impossible to predict. It could be any combination of past events or something entirely new. Until the task is known, it’s difficult to guess how it might be scored.

[robotman]

If anyone saw this event, how does the vehicle reverse? Another mouse trap? Springs? Does it come to a stop and then immediately reverse? What was the distance used?

there are a few ways to do it i used a mousetrap with a long stick attached that had a string and the string was connected to the axle and you would turn the axle x amount of times one way than stop pull the string around a pin and turn in more times
look here
http://gallery.scioly.org/categories.ph ... 9baab0aaac
here is my car
http://gallery.scioly.org/details.php?image_id=1049

[Paradox21]

If anyone saw this event, how does the vehicle reverse? Another mouse trap? Springs? Does it come to a stop and then immediately reverse? What was the distance used?

there are a few ways to do it i used a mousetrap with a long stick attached that had a string and the string was connected to the axle and you would turn the axle x amount of times one way than stop pull the string around a pin and turn in more times
look here
http://gallery.scioly.org/categories.ph ... 9baab0aaac
here is my car
http://gallery.scioly.org/details.php?image_id=1049

Oh, I finally understand your design. Originally I would have thought that that would never work because there would be too much momentum when you were going out so that if you had the string pull in the opposite direction it would not be able to overcome the momentum. But upon building some prototypes of Out and Back cars I realized that you can get the cars to go very slow. My prototypes have one mousetrap on each axle. The first brings it out, and stops, then triggers the second mousetrap which brings it back. I am pretty excited about this event, I can't wait to get my hands on a rule packet.

[dickyjones]

Yeah, I also did this event as a trial event in middle school in Indiana (there was only one mousetrap allowed, I believe). Our design was pretty much the same as everyone's, we attached a fishing rod to the mousetrap and did the attached string to the axel with the pin in the middle to reverse direction. It got 2nd without actually performing very well.. The speed of the vehicle is actually slow and its incredibly easy to build, though it took a bit of tuning. Also, it wasn't incredibly consistent in either time or distance so you'd have to find a way to improve both.