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6 x dewalt driven rammers...

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Really what JD should be doing is unifying the world measurement systems. Since that isn't so likely to work, he is trying the next best thing and I'm surprised people are having any problems with it. It's not like we have to adopt it any time soon and the only people it will really affect is those going to Robogames. We can endorse it in principle and get around to using the new weights when it's convenient. Let's all remember that the classes limit the maximum weight. Like Cobra, your bot can be well under that weight and still be effective if your design is good.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

I just edited the first message to change the title and remove the now-out-of-date poll so its not confusing for newcomers to the thread.
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

if you wanted to do a "standard"
why not do binary?
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256

they are all cool sounding numbers eh? and it does make sense.
256 kg is pretty damn hardcore as far as bots go.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Only a hacker would suggest a binary number system

I'll bet you have a binary clock on your wall and can read it too..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

bah, they are all parallell things bunch of amatures
look at how inefficent they are.

use a serial clock man. 1 LED, its the way of the future.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

well, given that o/s virtualisation is the latest buzz at the moment, I think you could use one led and do a x/y deflection propellor clock.. thats sort of serial..

Actually, come to think of it, a CRT is serial as well.. its just a really high-res long persistance electron-beam propellor clock with serial dots

Ahem, I'd better get back on topic, or I'll be forced to moderate myself into the o/t area.

You and your binary weights..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Eh Brett, I just found out my futrue working life revolves around VMware Not sure of it's real worth so i'm keen to keep combat bots in the real world - virtual damage is no fun at all.

We already moved from the UK to the US featherweight standards and while there was plenty of angst about it, there was really zero problems. We even made the transition in a very short period AFAIK. The new unified world classes are just another design challenge and if people want to phase it in, we might work out a bias judging rule in the short term. IMHO, the weight increase will change almost nothing.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

Be interesting to see if the current "Virtual Machine" hype thats being blathered about the IT industry at the moment proves to be a load of hoofluffle. It seems to me like they've all got that same look in their eye that they do when they start raving about "Intellectual Property". Heres an opportunity to sell another "nothing" (an imaginary machine) and get paid for it. Wonder how long this bubble will take to burst.

Theres something satisfying about beating a cluless noob over the head with a real-world pine clue-by-4.. a virtual twack would be nothing but a storm of bits.

My only concern is the increased load on the powertrain of the feathers. 10% weight increase is a lot to ask of batteries, motors etc that are typically on the limit already. Maybe I'm worried about nothing. Other than that, I could care less what the scales read, as long as its under the limit.
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

We are looking at consolidating 150 servers into (don't have a clue) hosts and VMs. Nobody has asked what happens when the host machine goes down...

Many people expected the end of the world when we went to 13.6kg and nothing much really happened. Our batteries will likely take the extra strain and if drill motors start to smoke, then we can reduce the wheel traction a bit by making the bunnings wheels thinner.

What need to do is a) decide whether or not to support the changes in theory and get that back to JD. b) If we support the change, then we need to announce a cut-over period where lighter bots get compenated, then we go with the world standard and everything settles down agian.
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Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion

quote:

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if you wanted to do a "standard"
why not do binary?
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256

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Ummm Welch, not all the world uses 13.6kg. The poms and europeans still uses 12kg. If you look at the rules for the FRA UK championships, which they are trying to promote in a way to get robots from every country in the world to attend, they have set the feather weight limit to 12kg max. That is why we havn't heard about this compitition, 95% of our robots are too heavy.
This is a prime case of why we need an international standard.

I can also understand why Mr Dave went with 15kg. It coverts very easily back into pounds. 12kg doesn't convert to pounds and 30lbs doesn't convert to kilograms. We don't mind, but we arn't poms and I know they'll whinge if it didn't round out nicely.

I also don't understand the problems with motors. I accidently made a 15kg robot (Adversary) and I didn't blow any cheap drills. Just because Glen blows drill in a 10kg robot, doesn't mean everyone will blow them in a 15kg robot. Actually you could get 2 x 300W scooters into a 15kg robot.

15kg = 33.0693 lb ~33 lb
13.6kg = 29.982 lb ~30 lb
12.5kg = 27.55775 lb ~27.5 lb
12kg = 26.45544 lb ~26.5lb

They are all pretty close to workable numbers in both formats.

This doesn't affect me directly as I can just order 4mm Hardox instead of 3.25mm and bolt a piece of 10mm Hardox down the back for ballast.. It just means a lot of work for people like Nick who have spent months getting there design panned out and revising it and getting the weight down so they can get more power into weapons or drives and now they will have to suddenly do this whole process again. Most of use will just have to add more armour to compensate...

Why does the weight have to go up? Why not down? Is this to follow the global overweight trend ? Chrisjon must be pissin himself laughing right now...

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Originally posted by Philip Taylor:
Does anyone think that it is going to be easy to stick with the 13.6 kg limit? You will probably find you over shoot to 15 kg when aiming for 13.6 kg. People find it hard to keep their weight down to 100 kg for the heavies. Increasing the weight limit will not makr the balance between battery, drive, weapon and armour weights any easier.

The only consideration is do we want to change to conform to the American weights.

In another 18 months we might be discussing changing to 15 kg. I hope not.

I hope that in 1.5 years you can tell me that I was wrong.

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Originally posted by chrisjon65:

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I bet chrisjons first comment will be "i told u so".

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yeah agreed there kerrison

Well it looks like for rg07 there will be 15kg feathers going now soi have many ideas now which may help, extra spinnerdefense with current weopon disc, basic setup with a 3kg disc (since i can add some more weight into a weopon) for all robots that dont require spinner defense against, maybe some form of way to self right or run inverted ..

Ive had drills going and have nto blow one for years now i thinkand ive had robots piled on top pushing them which is like alot more than 15 KG

Whats the feeling about local in australia comps, we going to be adopting the 15kg weight increase soon or leaving it as is for a while becaue it still isnt def from the yanks yet as there still arguing bout it etc
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Andrew Welch, Team Unconventional Robotics

Persoannly, I'm thinking leave it where it is, unless the rest of world thinks its a great idea.

I appreciate Judge Daves "Unification" efforts, but we're already in line with the US guys. If they go and move just for the sake of making the numbers look purty, well that seems silly to me.

If the whole world goes that way, then I guess we'll have to move if we want to keep the international competition possibility open (Not that theres been a lot of that), but its kind of annoying to have to rebuild for the sake of numerical aesthetics.
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people