Robot Arm C

[chalker]

Last year, I saw several teams use “tools”. One example would be putting a “corral” down so the Ping-Pong balls would not roll away. Tools were often left on the playing surface without penalty.

I think that tools are still allowed this year but the new rule 6g(vii) muddies the waters a bit. It reads the run must stop when “Any part detaches from the Device.”

Tools are not parts. That was made clear last year. (If they were parts, then rule 6g(vi) would have applied).

Comments?

I will be submitting this to Nationals for a rule clarification.

As always, this is not that place for official statements..... I think you are misrecalling the situation last year. Rule 3 explicitly mentioned: "optional detachable passive Arm end effectors (parts that interact with the Items on the Competition Area)". And rule 6.g.vii exempted them from causing time to stop: "not including optionally detachable passive end effectors". The word "tools" wasn't in the rules and hence isn't really applicable - everything you are thinking of was really a "detachable passive Arm end effector".

Note all that language has been removed this year, and in fact 6.g.vii. has been changed to explicitly state time stops when any parts detach from the arm.

[GoldenKnightB]

Thank you. You are right! I focused on Rule 6 and did not go back and look at how things were defined in Rule 3.

[jander14indoor]

Again not official.

You might want to distinguish between a tool or separable end effector and an auxiliary arm.

A fence (connected to the device only by gravity) that you picked up with the end effector and set on the board would stop timing this year.
However, if the fence was hinged to the base, had its own motor and control (ie can independantly lower and raise), never separated. I wouldn't expect that to stop the time. It would just be a 1 DOF arm.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[laidlawe18]

Going along with this train of thought, what exactly defines an end effector, and what is allowed to touch the competition area? Would it be okay to use an arm that has a caster wheel on the end so that the end can rest on the ground? This would greatly reduce the torque required to move the arm around.

[jander14indoor]

Place here my usual statement about not an official answer, and so on...

End effectors aren't tightly defined. They are whatever part of the robot arm that has some effect on the target objects (pennies this year).
Since they aren't allowed to be picked up or detached this year, its not real important to define where the end effector ends and the arm starts.

As to your specific question, I think you are referring to para 6.g.vi. Since that caster isn't really meant to effect the end items directly, I don't think you can call it an end effector. BUT, as long as it doesn't touch the device square in the ready to run configuration, I wouldn't expect it to invoke the stop time penalty of this paragraph.

Example, to LAST years rules, so would need to be evaluated officially against this year's rules, a device competed at nationals with something similar. It dropped an arm out beyond the objects with a wheel on the end to support weight. It was not DQ'ed or time stopped.

I will note it had a different problem. The competitors apparently had only competed on a large flat surface well beyond the competition area. There is no guarantee of that. If the competition area had been on a smallish table they would have had NO surface to rest on. The competition area was laid out on 1/2 inch thick cement board and the did have a little trouble with bumping on and off.

Jeff Anderson
Livonia, MI

[bernard]

Competition layout overview and full-size printable layouts are on the national website: https://www.soinc.org/robot_arm_c.

2017 Layout Overview (PDF)
2017 Printable Layout of the Competition Area (PDF) - Multi-letter-sized pages for regular printers
2017 Printable Layout of the Competition Area (PDF) - One page for a large-format printer

[Witahemui]

I'm confused by Rule 7.a) "Any penny under or over another penny or not visible to the ES must not receive any points". Does that mean that a stack of pennies would not receive any points so the pennies would have to be spread out?

[Unome]

I'm confused by Rule 7.a) "Any penny under or over another penny or not visible to the ES must not receive any points". Does that mean that a stack of pennies would not receive any points so the pennies would have to be spread out?

Welcome to Scioly.org! (rules disclaimer)

This seems to be exactly the intent. To score highly (near the top in several larger states, and top half or so at Nationals), teams will probably have to focus a lot of effort on packing pennies close together in a single layer (i.e. seprating them from the stack efficiently). However, at lower levels, less rigorous strategies, such as just pushing around the stacks, will probably be more common. See this thread for more info.

[AlterNSO]

So, I’ve submitted a clarification on this but haven’t heard anything back yet. I think Rule 6.g.vii is going to be a little bit of a headache. (In fact if give me flashbacks to being an event supervisor for mission possible, which is not a good thing). I think the intent of the rule and what the rule says do not really match up. Correct me if I’m wrong but having done Science Olympiad for a while I think the rule is intended to make using a hook to drag pennies closer, then dropping the hook stop the run. Also dropping any tool on the field. However, after my students disagreed with my interpretation I asked the English teachers at my school and they agreed with my students about the wording. The example is it is not correct to say a pencil detached from my hand if I drop it. By the same token it is not correct to say a piece held by the claw detached if it was simply released. So detached implies a more permanent connection than simply grabbing. There are also going to be teams tying hooks or tools to their base and saying that those pieces are still attached so they didn’t become detached etc.

Also on a more philosophical note this rule makes me a little sad as a coach and proponent of Science Olympiad for two reasons.

1. In many ways robot arm is the poster child for the science Olympiad is expensive and you need money to do well arguments for a school not doing it. Reach for a robot arm is expensive not matter how you construct it. The counter argument that has always been true was a team can do very well by using an arm with less reach that could use a hook to drag pieces in so that their shorter arm could manipulate them. Eliminating that really does drive up the expense of being able to reach all the pennies this year and gives am even bigger advantage to teams with more resources.

2. My students were fighting me about this because they had lots of good ideas about flipping the pennies using tools they could set out on the surface. They had some very creative engineering solutions to the problem of flipping the pennies. They elimination of being able to set things down on the field basically limits teams to grabbing the pennies and flipping them by turning over the claw.

Anyway if anyone knows why this change was made I’d love to know to make myself feel better about it. Thanks.

[HandsFreeCookieDunk]

So, I’ve submitted a clarification on this but haven’t heard anything back yet. I think Rule 6.g.vii is going to be a little bit of a headache. (In fact if give me flashbacks to being an event supervisor for mission possible, which is not a good thing). I think the intent of the rule and what the rule says do not really match up. Correct me if I’m wrong but having done Science Olympiad for a while I think the rule is intended to make using a hook to drag pennies closer, then dropping the hook stop the run. Also dropping any tool on the field. However, after my students disagreed with my interpretation I asked the English teachers at my school and they agreed with my students about the wording. The example is it is not correct to say a pencil detached from my hand if I drop it. By the same token it is not correct to say a piece held by the claw detached if it was simply released. So detached implies a more permanent connection than simply grabbing. There are also going to be teams tying hooks or tools to their base and saying that those pieces are still attached so they didn’t become detached etc.

Also on a more philosophical note this rule makes me a little sad as a coach and proponent of Science Olympiad for two reasons.

1. In many ways robot arm is the poster child for the science Olympiad is expensive and you need money to do well arguments for a school not doing it. Reach for a robot arm is expensive not matter how you construct it. The counter argument that has always been true was a team can do very well by using an arm with less reach that could use a hook to drag pieces in so that their shorter arm could manipulate them. Eliminating that really does drive up the expense of being able to reach all the pennies this year and gives am even bigger advantage to teams with more resources.

2. My students were fighting me about this because they had lots of good ideas about flipping the pennies using tools they could set out on the surface. They had some very creative engineering solutions to the problem of flipping the pennies. They elimination of being able to set things down on the field basically limits teams to grabbing the pennies and flipping them by turning over the claw.

Anyway if anyone knows why this change was made I’d love to know to make myself feel better about it. Thanks.

As someone from a school that can't spend a ton of money on SciOly, these were exactly my thoughts as well. After I saw the rules, it seemed like there really wasn't any room for cheap yet creative solutions to the problem and it was really just build an arm with enough servos and reach to get it done.