Community vote: Classification of 'Twitch-likes'

Hey folks,

I visited Trossen a couple of weeks ago, with Twitch, and in talking with Tyberius, it was decided to put it to the community as to how Twitch-likes should be classified for the Mech Warfare Competition. The fundamental issue comes down to the fact that the MW rules are based on number of legs, but do not define anything based on the number of feet or style of feet.

At stake are three questions: (1)) Do these bots get put in the same league as quads and bipeds, or in the open league (which has not really existed, but is reserved rovers and hexapods)? (2) Which scoring panel configuration - 4 full panels like a quad, or 2 full, 2 half like a biped? (3) Bipeds receive 15% extra hit points. We can give this to Twitch-likes, or not, or even do the opposite: e.g. -15% hit points (17 total).

Twitch throws a bunch of wrenches into the rules.

As currently built, Twitch has six separate points of contact with the ground. This could be configured as 2, 3, 4, or 5 points of contact. These "feet" are in two groups, with feet in a given group being fixed relative to each other. You could choose to consider these groups to be legs - two legs.

To illustrate the various feet configurations, pictures!

Top View

Six points of contact with current Twitch
Quad configuration - joining the lower legs
Two-foot configuration - outrageously shaped joined feet
Side view of making single feet for the quad.

The point to this is that while I can configure the feet in various bizarre ways so that it's technically 4-footed, or whatever, this kind of bot should probably just be classified separately.

There is also Jwatte's Little Walker. This uses a different foot configuration, but is the same principle of 3 servos locomotion via large footprint. While different, there is continuum of possible designs between Twitch and Little Walker. Thus in my opinion, they should fall under the same umbrella in the rules.

This design also lowers the cost of entry for MW. A $500 Dynamixel bot is very possible... Probably not a bad thing.

Finally there's the spirit of the rules. The MW competition aims to emulate the MW games of yore (and the new nifty looking MW Online). There's nothing like Twitch, or hexapods, or rovers in the MW lore, and that has been an added basis for the separate Open League. You can choose to factor that into your opinion...

I'm sure others have thoughts (JWatte was in a rush to get his in ). I encourage you to read others' thoughts, post your own. There's no rush to vote immediately on this, as discussion is good. I have however set the voting to end in 30 days... I'm planning on such a mech, and making a decision a couple months before MW gives me the chance to change my approach if needed . Poll options were my first go at it with the new forum layout, and apparently I can't edit them. Worst case, a new thread gets made if a glaring omission was made in the options.

Thanks for reading!

(Note, I got lazy and didn't discuss/document the style of walking that Twitch uses... If some feel the definition of walking is also necessary for debate, I can better document that with vid, if needed...)

Source: http://feeds.trossenrobotics.com/~r/TRCommunity/~3/9Ud5glxccuU/showthread.php

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