Getting the Totes Right Side Up from the Chute Door

[GuyM142]

I've seen that some teams could get the totes right side up out of the tote chute. Normally totes tend to fall over when they fall on the carpet and there is obviously a technique to prevent that.

Can someone explain what are the methods in order to achieve that?
Thank you!

Edit:
I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

[Teched3]

We have a lip extending out from our frame to "catch" the front edge of the tote before the tote hits the floor. We back up slightly and the tote falls upright.:) :)

[SoccerTaco]

Hi, there are a few techniques that I've seen.

Some teams are building ramps, which they tether to their robot, so the totes slide nicely into the field.

Some teams push a tote - often one of the yellow totes - up to the chute door. (yes, chute door) The long side of the tote is against the wall. This creates a ramp of sorts, and totes generally bounce over the "ramp tote" and land upright on the field. It does not seem 100%, but it works pretty well.

I've not seen this myself, and my team didn't play with it since we have a slide built into our robot, but I've read that some teams will, as the tote is sliding down the chute, lower the door onto the top of the tote before it exits the chute - and are able to bump it in such a way as to help it land upright.

Hope that helps!

Steve

[Anthony Galea]

We have an actuating claw for our lift, so we line up at the feeder station, and close the claw on the tote before it hits the ground, open, and it lands flat. It has worked every time, providing we are lined up with the chute door.

[SeanFitz]

What we do is set our robot a little ways away from the door, and then just let the tote fall naturally. The front hits our robot and the rest falls back onto the ground level and ready to be picked up. It might be a little slower than using a ramp, but it saves weight and has yet to fail us once.

[rich2202]

Our team discovered this by accident. If our grabber is closed, the tote will land on the grabber. Then the driver opens the grabber, and the tote lands on the floor right side up. Then the driver can grab the tote correctly.

[Pretzel]

Our team has a method that I haven't seen many others use in the form of a conveyor belt through the middle of our robot. We load totes into the back of the robot and they slide out to the front where our stacking mechanism is located. We also have two rails that actuate in and out (one on each side of the tote) to re-align the tote if we didn't back up to the chute perfectly square.

[GuyM142]

Thanks for all the comments!
But I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

[Neima]

Thanks for all the comments!
But I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

I don't know how they are doing that in that video but at 10k lake I saw a team able to do that too. Their human player would barely put the tote in the chute then let go of it and open the chute door before the tote would hit the door. This allowed the tote to gain enough speed to not tip on its side. I asked the head ref about it and he said it was a grey area.

[msaunders]

I was intrigued also.

I am uploading some close up videos from Bedford.

2015 Bedford FRC548 HP Tote Loading (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NhsxXmlh8Y)
548 does not use a ramp. I think I saw one tote that did not land flat.

2015 Bedford FRC 2137 HP Tote Loading (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uBitEjkG-0)

[hectorcastillo]

Hi, as far as getting the tote to land perfectly without it touching anything but the chute, I'd say it comes pretty much down to luck. Our human tried a lot of different things like angling the tote in the chute and hitting the tote with the door on the way out to slow it down. None of these techniques yielded a desirable outcome. :/

However, we are able to get the totes out of the chute perfectly every time without touching them with our robot. Well, technically it does touch our robot. We built a table that sits in front of the chute that catches the totes and lets them land perfectly every time. This table is tethered to our robot so we can move independently from it #teamtether. We call it "El Stackador"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8zgCWCB5RBYWFh3NThZRGJyQ0U/view?usp=sharing

Now, obviously this won't work for you if you are usually picking up from the ground. What you might want to try is building just the top of the table and sitting it on the ground where the totes land, possibly with an open front if your robot sucks the totes in from the front. I know team 3310 has a similar mechanism that acts like the top of our table, but it fold down from the front of their robot.

Good luck,
-3481

[Nick.kremer]

Thanks for all the comments!
But I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

Our Human player does this. What he tells me is that he lifts the chute door, lets the tote slide out, and hits the tote really hard with the chute door on the back end of it (he estimated about the last 1/4th of the tote). He was pretty good at it, I would say he got them right side up 80% of the time. Its really all about timing.

For me however, even 80% of the time wasn't reliable enough, so we ended up going with a ramp, but its up to you. Hope this helped!

[Ginger Power]

I've seen teams slam the chute door down on the back end of the tote as it's exiting the chute. It seemed to be effective in getting the tote to land in a nice orientation.

[D.Allred]

Hi, there are a few techniques that I've seen.

I've not seen this myself, and my team didn't play with it since we have a slide built into our robot, but I've read that some teams will, as the tote is sliding down the chute, lower the door onto the top of the tote before it exits the chute - and are able to bump it in such a way as to help it land upright.
...


That's the technique we use. We hit the last few inches of the tote as it exits. Use just a bit of pressure. The tote will nose dive if you hit it too early or too hard.

David

[Siri]

It's not luck; it's practice. There are actually [at least] two main methods, one faster than HPs typically go and one slower. Neither involves violating G5, G6 or any other rules. There's no visible delay in overall throughput between them, though in reality there probably is some incremental difference. Personally I find the slower approach easier and more consistent--actually, I had trouble making totes land on end that way--but I know people who can do the faster approach all day long.

Actually, on looking at the 548 video, I'm not sure he's doing either approach I mentioned. (Though he may be; it's hard to tell.) So maybe there's more than two approaches.

[Neima]

Our Human player does this. What he tells me is that he lifts the chute door, lets the tote slide out, and hits the tote really hard with the chute door on the back end of it (he estimated about the last 1/4th of the tote). He was pretty good at it, I would say he got them right side up 80% of the time. Its really all about timing.

For me however, even 80% of the time wasn't reliable enough, so we ended up going with a ramp, but its up to you. Hope this helped!

is that legal though? i thought you were not suppose to use the chute door to slow down totes

[Brandon_L]

I've seen a few human players smack the tote with the chute door by slamming it down on the back end of the tote as it goes through, and it kind of lifts the front end of the tote enough for it to land right.

Edit: yeah, same method as previous post ^

[Nick.kremer]

is that legal though? i thought you were not suppose to use the chute door to slow down totes

As far as i can tell its legal, correct me if I'm wrong but there isn't a rule against using the chute door to slow down a tote.

[lamk]

My team just won the Western Canada Regional yesterday. During practice match we tried all sort of techniques playing with the chute door and the angle we put the tote in to get the tote to fall properly with no success. 50% of time it will end up wrong: upside down , side ways, vertical, you name it. We also make sure that we have the head ref's blessing about "dragging" the totes with the door. We end up abandoning manipulating with the chute door. Instead we open our robot's arm fully and run the robot arm against the wall so that when the tote come down it will bump into the robot first and we got it perfect every time for the whole competition. I talk to my team about building a ramp at the competition but once we found the technique we did not build a ramp. I'm not sure if this experience will help the original poster or not though.

[Boltman]

I know you want human only method but for teams in Worlds wanting their fork robots to do this , here is what worked for us.

We could stack two out of chute door by placing our bot (pneumatic fork) in front of chute door to guide first tote with out single side pneumatic fork create a one platform and second tote stacks automatically ...similar to ramp efficiency.

We could create one tote platform go get RC and come back for auto stack second and carry two tote noodled RC to a four stack..using same method to build for stack when using HP.

Robot needs to guide first tote out and create the one tote platform for second tote.

[lamk]

I also think not all chutes are build the same. In our regional totes fed thru the red alliance right chute usually lands better than the left chute if fed thru with no special technique.

[SciBorg Dave]

Our human player ( Cameron) has done 100% at some Districts of the totes landing flat. Other teams have filmed him with slow motion cameras to see how he does it. I told the other teams to ask Cameron for some lessons no secrets in FIRST. Now we will tell you Cameron taps the last 10-15% of the tote as it is leaving the chute with the door. If you want lessons you must come to the Northwest. You can go to http://pnwfirst.org/
we are at District 4 , District 7 and Championship. Cameron is on team 4061. Good luck.

[EricH]

I don't know how they are doing that in that video but at 10k lake I saw a team able to do that too. Their human player would barely put the tote in the chute then let go of it and open the chute door before the tote would hit the door. This allowed the tote to gain enough speed to not tip on its side. I asked the head ref about it and he said it was a grey area.No grey area about it--if he's not touching the tote and the chute door at the same time, there is no foul that can reasonably be called. Propping doesn't apply, because only the hand is being used to open the door--and if that was called for propping, the QA for every team at the event would be zero due to all the red cards.

is that legal though? i thought you were not suppose to use the chute door to slow down totes
Ask your head ref. They will tell you how it will be called at your event. Or look at Q260.

[April_robo]

The human player from 548 actually gave my team pointers on how to do it at our first event. He gently taps the back edge of the tote. A gentle tap usually does the job but without practice the likeliness of missing the tote is very high. 548's human player does it so flawlessly because he has been practicing for a while now. After my teams ramp failed us at Troy we decided to try out his method and we more than doubled our tote scoring abilities.

[SciBorg Dave]

The human player from 548 actually gave my team pointers on how to do it at our first event. He gently taps the back edge of the tote. A gentle tap usually does the job but without practice the likeliness of missing the tote is very high. 548's human player does it so flawlessly because he has been practicing for a while now. After my teams ramp failed us at Troy we decided to try out his method and we more than doubled our tote scoring abilities.

I agree it is a gentle tap, then practice, practice and more practice.

[Jacob4564]

Something that our human player has extensively practiced is letting the tote slide halfway through the chute then bringing the door on top of the tote slowing it down, then letting the tote go. We found that since the totes weren't going so fast they tended to land right side up.

[Qbot2640]

Many posts are indicating the same thing we do - rather than "multi-quote" them all - I just wanted to add:

The sharp but gentle tap on the back side of the tote with the chute door is what we've done, and I would venture to guess that we're 100% when this is done right. The times the tote has landed improperly were because of one of the two following faults: If you tap too hard or too long, you slow the tote too much and it lands on end....if you miss entirely and do not tap at all, it comes out erratically and will likely end up on it's side. SO...

Quick tap and lift (we've found that using both hands on opposite handles of the door is the best control) on the back portion of the tote...not so much to slow it down, as to "control" it's departure from the chute...is the key.

And "yes" to both - "practice, practice, practice" and "all chutes react differently". Our "practice field" style chute that we got from our kickoff field works perfectly, landing totes flat with no intervention at all...it had us at a major disadvantage in our first event, expecting the same results in competition that we had in the garage.