Robot Arm C

[twototwenty]

Keep in mind, though, that a very large contributor to how well you do in this event is practice, and now many teams will have built working robot systems, so the time from now until nationals will be spent practicing, so it would make sense that the number of maximum-scoring teams will probably be more than just 6-8.

[hmcginny]

I think its safe to say that more than 6-8 teams will be capable of perfect runs, but there is so much room for slight human error in this event that a good number of potentially perfect robots will score 91s because they mess up the pencil on the edge or mismanage their time slightly. 6-8 sounds reasonable and it seems like such a pity that the primary tiebreaker between these robots will be something as subjective as "quality of technical documentation".

[chalker7]

I think its safe to say that more than 6-8 teams will be capable of perfect runs, but there is so much room for slight human error in this event that a good number of potentially perfect robots will score 91s because they mess up the pencil on the edge or mismanage their time slightly. 6-8 sounds reasonable and it seems like such a pity that the primary tiebreaker between these robots will be something as subjective as "quality of technical documentation".

The primary tiebreaker is number of motors (which is where pre-planning, effective design work and strategy will come into play,) not quality of technical documentation.

[hmcginny]

I think its safe to say that more than 6-8 teams will be capable of perfect runs, but there is so much room for slight human error in this event that a good number of potentially perfect robots will score 91s because they mess up the pencil on the edge or mismanage their time slightly. 6-8 sounds reasonable and it seems like such a pity that the primary tiebreaker between these robots will be something as subjective as "quality of technical documentation".

The primary tiebreaker is number of motors (which is where pre-planning, effective design work and strategy will come into play,) not quality of technical documentation.

What I mean is that there will be a good number of teams that are perfect with the same number of motors and thus technical documentation will come into play. I think one or two teams will be one motor lower than this clump of perfect scores, but there will still probably be medals decided by technical documentation. Number of motors will almost act as a way of "tiering" the perfect scores and thus we could well see places 3-8 (or any arbitrary set of places where teams have perfect scores with equal numbers of motors) decided by the quality of technical documentation. I understand the place of technical documentation within the event, yet I just don't see it being the best way to break a tie. In building events, I feel as though objective scoring (distances, times, object scoring, efficiency, etc.) should determine the result. However, this is really just my opinion and my predictions involving how these tiebreakers play out may well be completely inaccurate.

[chalker7]

I think its safe to say that more than 6-8 teams will be capable of perfect runs, but there is so much room for slight human error in this event that a good number of potentially perfect robots will score 91s because they mess up the pencil on the edge or mismanage their time slightly. 6-8 sounds reasonable and it seems like such a pity that the primary tiebreaker between these robots will be something as subjective as "quality of technical documentation".

The primary tiebreaker is number of motors (which is where pre-planning, effective design work and strategy will come into play,) not quality of technical documentation.

What I mean is that there will be a good number of teams that are perfect with the same number of motors and thus technical documentation will come into play. I think one or two teams will be one motor lower than this clump of perfect scores, but there will still probably be medals decided by technical documentation. Number of motors will almost act as a way of "tiering" the perfect scores and thus we could well see places 3-8 (or any arbitrary set of places where teams have perfect scores with equal numbers of motors) decided by the quality of technical documentation. I understand the place of technical documentation within the event, yet I just don't see it being the best way to break a tie. In building events, I feel as though objective scoring (distances, times, object scoring, efficiency, etc.) should determine the result. However, this is really just my opinion and my predictions involving how these tiebreakers play out may well be completely inaccurate.

Fair enough, I too think there will only be a couple of teams that stand above the others and figure out how to use one less motor. That being said, predictions mean nothing once the competition day comes around in just a few short weeks....

[iwonder]

I think the idea behind the technical documentation was so teams would spend the time to properly engineer the arm, and not assemble something last minute, or on a whim without specs. Now from that you can assume that the tie breaker was but in place so teams wouldn't come to the event with pencil drawings done the night before the event and expect it to count, in any case, at our state contest the quality of technical documentation was very different between teams, I saw teams walk in with drawings free-handed on notebook paper and then there were teams(us... cough cough ) that had drawings done in CAD, typed out detailed component lists, and theories of operation with pictures/diagrams and the like. With that being said, I don't see the difference in the quality being so close that it would play a major factor in scoring, maybe if several teams at nats pulled off a perfect run, had 3?(that's the smallest I've seen) motors and 3D models with drawings and all the other documentation organized, etc. That's the only case where I can viably see the documentation being much of a subjective call on the opinion of the event supervisor. However, if it does come down to that... maybe they should be rethought for next year... I do like the idea though.

Also, how would someone use less than 3? I can't wrap my head around it without some complicated, and seemingly unreliable transmission... then again... I have 7 in my current design... a little overkill...

[FueL]

Were any of the teams that used 3 motors successful? I can't see how it could be done with anything less than 4.

[iwonder]

Yes actually, they were getting almost perfect scores(no bonus box) with 3, of course, I'd rather not give away how they did it since they're going to nats... But it's entirely possible.

[FueL]

Wouldn't the maximum score without the bonus box be around a 73/94? If the whole point of having less motors is to win tiebreaks, it seems like a bit of a waste unless the robot can get perfect scores.

[harryk]

Yes actually, they were getting almost perfect scores(no bonus box) with 3, of course, I'd rather not give away how they did it since they're going to nats... But it's entirely possible.

What team are you thinking of? Because I took first at state and I wasn't anywhere near a perfect score, and if you don't use the bonus boxes you're sacrificing 18 points right there which is pretty far from perfect. I Think that in order to get a perfect run, you need 4 motors: Base Rotate, Shoulder, Wrist, and Gripper

EDIT: It's actually 21 points, not 18