[MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Building off of the 2012 thread, I would like to do a MCC discussion for 2011. Remeber Logomotion? You know the game where you made logos out of inflatable tubes, and then had the minibot drag race at the end...
Coopertition wasn't a bridge, but was allowing one of your team's minibots to ride with a different team.

Remember the rules of MCC:
I would like this thread to focus on the "Minimum Competitive Concept" for a robot for 20XX. It is often easy to identify all the possible tasks you could have a robot do. Prioritizing those tasks, and realizing it in the form of a competitive robot is in my opinion much more impressive.

If you haven't read the Simbotics Strategy Presentation, please do before responding to this thread. Especially review the "Golden Rules 1&2".

Assumptions are that one of the priamry goals of the MCC is to play in elims (not necessarily win on Einstein), and you team has mid-pack to lower fabrication resources.
Please list your assumptions, strategy to seed high, estimate of a winning score, and what robot design elements would achieve this score.
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2011 could have a couple very interesting MCC directions. I look forward to the ideas everyone brings to the table.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Hrmm. This one is a toughie. In early regionals, a robot could easily reach elims with no tube-hanging if they had a quick minibot deployment mechanism, as well as (what would be considered in late season) a moderately fast minibot.

But if you look at the game in the end of the season, with the development of tube-starving strategies, tube grabbing was a must, at the least so that a robot could not necessarily hang, but bring tubes across the field...


I'll have to think about what an overall MCC would look like today...

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

First things first for this team, they should pursue the simplest, most effective, and easiest to build drive train possible, and build a kitbot on steroids. Any team can toss together a kitbot on steroids, and this is a very solid drive for any team with mid-pack to lower fabrication resources. Also, with a single speed drive that is geared fast enough (say around 10 fps), they would be quick enough to effectively play the game without the added complexity of shifting gearboxes.

If you wanted a robot to seed high in Logomotion, tube hanging becomes more of a necessity. The least complicated tube haning mechanism should be sought after to achieve this task. A simple rear-mounted single jointed arm could be realitively easy for this team to build and design, but I think they should make one sacrifice with the arm: don't have a floor pick-up ability, get your tubes exclusively from the feeder slot. This would allow the arm to be able to score on the high racks without any kind of extending mechanism or second joint.

Team 1503's 2011 robot is definately compelling proof that choosing not to pick up off the floor can produce one of the strongest robots in all of FIRST. Their two regional wins and trip to einstein speak volumes for the effectiveness of this machine.

So this concept robot, with its simple single jointed arm could hypothetically score one ubertube and five to six tubes on the high rack per match. Even without a minibot, this would win a majority of matches at the regional level and even allow this robot to seed high enough to be an alliance captain (but I bet that with scoring rate of 5 to 6 tubes per match, they would probably be a first pick to one of the top four alliance captains, even without a minibot). Now if this team can come up with some kind of simple minibot and deployment system, this team could win regionals and be picked at the championship.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

This. In week one or two, the MCC was a kitbot with a simple minibot (Gearboxes and tetrix wheels). Later, the MCC needed a faster minibot and 2-stage deployer(loosing the big wheels and gearboxes around week 3). I don't think the MCC ever needed tube handling abilities. A simple drivebase could still push triangles away from opponents. However, a simple single-jointed arm and pinch-claw would be nice to have, as it gives abilities to be a feeder and a scorer (in one of the few games where all 3 bots could play offence at once) with an autonomous.
My list of features in order of importance:
1. Kit base: Because driving is nice.
2. Simple gearbox minibot: Lots of points early in the season.
3. Plaction wheels with roughtop tread: The CimpleBoxes were geared more for speed, so you won't be pushing. But, you
don't want to be pushed sideways across the (wide open) field trying to defend with kit wheels.
If possible, add:
1. Direct drive minibot w/ 2-stage deployment: Lower on the list because it can be built post-build season. Faster ones
guaranteed 30-40 pts per match.
2. Single-joint 1503-esque arm: It got them to Einstein, it should get the MCC picked at a regional. Adds posibility of
auton for more points and a better chance of getting picked because now you can score, feed, and defend.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Solid Drivetrain and a really fast minibot. :D

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

2011 is a tough year for the MCC. And that is what we tried to go for on 2791 with a HIGHLY constrained build season. We did way too much though. It was mostly my fault for losing faith in "human load only" around Week 2.

The minibot was the obviously most vital part of the game. But it was quite, quite expensive to prototype and iterate your way to a direct drive minibot with a solid reliable deployer. Every time your prototype blew a motor, $30 down the drain. Yes, you could work on it after ship, but without a robot to look at and to figure out mounting, dimensions, etc., unprepared teams (I.e. those doing the MCC) had an uphill battle. Yet, at the early regional level, just having a semi reliable minibot made you an instantly decent robot. So I'm tempted to say the best "MCC" is a Kitbot on Steroids with a minibot on top of it.

If you do tube scoring and you have the drive practice you need to get to 5 tubes, there is no need to floor load. There is strategic value in moving tubes around though.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

How many teams could reliably place 5 tubes on the high rack during the game?

This is way to lofty of a goal for a MCC in 2011 in my opinion.

A smaller 4 bar arm that could score in the center and floor load would be more of a goal for an MCC that was looking to be a scorer. Scoring an ubertube and making one logo on the center pegs would have won most matches and that same robot would be an invaluable feeder to a top seeded alliance.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

This is massively outweighed by the minibot value though.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Oh no doubt, I was just referring to those who said scoring 5 tubes up high was easy.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Remember, the goal is to play in Elims, not necessarily on Einstein. How many times in qualifying were both Minibot poles used on an alliance during quals? If you have 2 faster minibots than your 3rd... Aren't you likely to win that match anyway? Also, did it have to be your minibot?

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

1) As the season progressed, yes.

2) More than likely, yes

3) I would say almost definitely, unless the team doing the MCC is closely linked with another team that they'd be competing with. I don't know for a fact, but I don't think minibot sharing was anywhere near as common as FIRST hoped it would be.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Scoring 5 tubes on the high rack is by no means an easy task, but with a robot that can pick up from the feeder slot and score on the high rack, It could be possible to achieve with enough driver practice.

Say that in order to score a minibot, the team needs 20 seconds of the match. That leaves 100 seconds to score, so a scoring cycle of 20 seconds per tube. If the robot is geared for 10 feet per seconds with a single speed transmission, the scoring cycle can be broken down like this:

0s to 6s: cross field to feeder slot
6s to 8s: line up and pick up tube from feeder slot
8s to 14s: cross back to scoring rack
14s to 20s: line up and score tube

This is an ambitious scoring cycle, but with enough practice this could be achieved. Even if the team was only able to score four tubes, they still get in a 24 point logo (assuming they scored an ubertube), a three point tube, and a minibot. This was enough to win the majority of the qualifying rounds at the regional level. With this kind of robot, it is really up to how effectively the driver can cross the field and score.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Some stats for comparison:

At Pittsburgh, a week 2 event:
0/39 teams averaged more than 5 tubes per match
1/39 teams averaged between 5 and 6 tubes per match
0/39 teams averaged between 4 and 5 tubes per match
3/39 teams averaged between 3 and 4 tubes per match

At Waterloo, a week 4 event:
1/29 teams averaged more than 6 tubes per match
1/29 teams averaged between 5 and 6 tubes per match
2/29 teams averaged between 4 and 5 tubes per match,
1/29 teams averaged between 3 and 4 tubes per match

At GTR East, a week 5 event:
1/36 teams averaged more than 6 tubes per match
0/36 teams averaged between 5 and 6 tubes per match
1/36 teams averaged between 4 and 5 tubes per match
2/36 teams averaged between 3 and 4 tubes per match

At the Championship, Galileo Division:
3/88 teams averaged more than 6 tubes per match
5/88 teams averaged between 5 and 6 tubes per match
9/88 teams averaged between 4 and 5 tubes per match
13/88 teams averaged between 3 and 4 tubes per match

Even 1503, who was the poster child of simplicity, only averaged 3.3 and 4.3 tubes per match at their regionals.

What does this tell us?
- Even with the power of hindsight, people are underestimating the difficulty of scoring in a FIRST game
- If you could score a "mere" 3 tubes per match, you were going to be one of the top teams at your regional, and a strong contender to make the elimination rounds at Championship
- If you could score 5 tubes per match, you were going to be one of the top teams in FIRST

When considering the MCC, it's very important to remember what the 'M' stands for. Most teams fail at this; as they such attempt to bite of more than they can chew and more than is necessary.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

People often confuse a team's potential top score for their average.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

AMEN. For 2011, there was a flat continuous floor, so teams could play defense if they had an effective chassis that drove around well. This style of defense amounted to usually just slowing teams down.

If your goal is to play in elims, you get there 1 of 2 ways. Seeding high enough to be a captain, or getting picked. A solid drivetrain and good driver might get you picked, but it is not likely to help you win enough matches to stand a chance of being a captain. What feature could you add to a good driving platform that will have the highest scoring potential with minimal investment?

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1503 from 2011 is what I would call design elegance, not a MCC. Elegance can often be as much work as complexity. To be fair though and figure them out:
Assume an arm that cannot load from the floor, but does hit auton every time (this requires a robust arm and arm drivetrain with good controls). +6. If a logo gets made over the top of this, then essentially the logo is worth +18 and the Uber goes from +6 to +12. Thus a combined score of 30 points for 4 scoring actions. While not a bad strategy, few were able to achieve this strategy even with most teams attempting some sort of tube scoring strategy. The arm, the gripper, and the controls often proved too many things for the teams to execute well. Also, falling 1 tube short of the logo turns the 30 point series of plays into a 12 pt set of actions.

Are there other 12-30 point strategies that would have a higher success ratio if given the sme effort?

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

One robot I saw early in last year's build season on CD was a small arm that picked from the feeder station and elevated the tube just a tiny bit, enough to get on the second rack. This and kitbot drive would be my no-minibot MCC.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Drive + minibot! The real question is what the minimum competitive minibot and deployment look like.

Aside from that, one of the things I thought about last year was how a defensive minibot robot with no tube handling ability could score an ubertube in a very simple way. I think you could do it by mounting this type of a pole on your robot:

|___
|.....\
|
|
|

You preload the ubertube on top. In autonomous, you drive forward and then stop abruptly, causing the tube to fall off the slanted front of the pole and onto the scoring pole. Only the bottom row is accessible without extending past the 60" initial height limit. It's only 2 points, but it's an inexpensive 2 points. If that could telescope up to the top row in a simple way, it starts to look pretty good. Minibot + ubertube + defense is a really attractive pick for an alliance captain.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Note - Thank you Ian Curtis for running these numbers...
http://ewcp.org/blog/2011/12/08/aver...-to-your-team/

In 2011 your MCC (I typically use the term MVP for Minimum Viable Product) was a kitbot (on or off steroids) and a minibot system. If you look at the average team they scored just over 10 points. Couple this with 33% of matches not having a single minibot go up and 76.7% of matches didn't have both alliances send a minibot up. Honestly, if you send any minibot up every match you will end up with max points 33% of the time and probably second place the rest of the time. This would have put you well in the top 50% of teams if not higher.

TL;DR - doing something reliably is better than doing something well occasionally.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

Is is valid within this conversation to suggest that a MCC team that knows the game rules and can avoid taking 3-4 lane incursion penalties per match is worth a 9-12 delta during alliace selection?

It is often left unstated by others, but we always explicitly list 'take no penalties' as one of our primary strategic concepts. Often the students suggest that penalties are inevitable, but this leads to a good conversation and training effort that requires as much work as a robot subassembly.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

In 2011, team 589 had a decent drivetrain, played defense, and had a reliable 4 second minibot. They seeded 4th and 16th in their two regionals and made the eliminations in both.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

I agree, however, my intentions were to recommend something conceptually similar to the 1503 arm. A single joint arm with a pinch-claw on the end. It could be as simple as some pvc and a pneumatic cylinder, or as complex as the 1503 triple-reduced, punched, flanged, and powder-coated am. I already said that I didn't believe the MCC needed an arm, but one would certainly make you a more attractive alliance pick (if only for the auton points). If you needed an arm, I think 179 had the simplest one that i saw in 2011, and if the only thing you wanted was autonomous, you could simplify that arm down to a tube simply pressed into the claw, without the servo-powered grabbers 179 had.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

To clarify, I meant 5 tubes in a 2 minute no-defense practice session. I recognize scoring a logo a match consistently was very good at the regional level.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

As an aside, note that when I say average in that post I meant mean. So the median robot (which is really what you care about, as at a large event the median robot will be roughly the last robot selected for eliminations) will be less good at scoring than the mean robot. As can be seen in Jim Zondag's data, robot scoring ability has a decidedly positive skew.

tl;dr: The numbers in my blog post above are over-estimates of how many points the median robot scored. And the median is likely what you are aiming for if you wanted to make elims as a 2nd pick at most events.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

I think one point that's been anecdotally eluded to in these two threads (yet not quite outright stated) is that the MCC should be designed for the specific Regional(s) a team will attend.

A Regional with 32 teams is a vastly different competition environment than a Regional with 64 teams (though such a low team count at a non-District event was uncommon this year). Getting good at the one thing that differentiates a MCC-team from the rest of the pack may not matter as much at the 64-team Regional since there could be plenty of teams who can do more than "MCC".

So would the MCC-team's strategy have to change for a small regional versus a large?

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

A repeatable minibot for 2011 would have been good at Granite State Regional (53 teams with a lot of high quality teams).
http://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2011nh

Quarters 1 often give good insight as you have #1 alliance against #8. #1 seeded highest and gets 1st pick. #8 was the quality of the lowest ranked captain and is picking what should be roughly the #16&#17 best robots at an event. since they are the last captain, the teams they are picking can't say no and still compete. Seeing what makes up a #8 alliance is to me a good indicator of what it takes to be a Captain and to get picked at an event. If you watch the quarters at this event, a repeatable mini-bot (as long as it makes it up in scoring time) would have been a good pick.
New Jersey, a 64 team event would seem to confirm the same logic:
http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2011nj_qf1m1
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At a qualified event like MSC, MAR Championship, World Championship, an MCC will likely run in to more difficulty, but those are distinctly different then the stated goal of playing in Elims at District or regional events.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

It was! Our minibot went up the pole 8 times in 10 matches (the two it didn't were when we were pushed away from the pole and one where we never moved due to a sidecar problem). Of those eight launches seven were first place and one was a close second! We had a pretty MCC robot for 2011. It was a kitbot on steriods (6wd plaction wheels with AMshifters) and a single jointed arm with a pinch claw for the low row. We averaged around 2-5 low tubes a match and a minibot all weekend and were the first pick by the 5th seeded alliance. Our low row tubes proved to be quite useful in matches as we were typically the primary scorer for our alliance and beat an effective tube scoring alliance in match 38 by one point!

Our 2011 record can be found here. Notice how the average score for our alliances were around 30 points (excluding match 32 from sidecar problems).

A video of one of our better matches at GSR can be found here!

At the Championship we mainly played defense, tube scoring, and 1s minibot.

Re: [MCC] Minimum Comptetivie Concept 2011
 

MCC = Juggernauts (@Kettering District)

A robot that is designed to be a MCC would be the following:

- KoP Chassis
- Simple Arm that lowers to pickup tubes from the floor
- Full Width Roller Claw

Basically a feeder bot. Many times the first round pick robots would be picked for their scoring ability or their minibot. Many teams would over look robots that could feed tubes well to have a third mediocre scorer or minibot. Also there was a strong correlation between good scorers and good minibots, typically if you had one you had the other.

For the "M" in MCC, I would say that making a good consistent Minibot was a very difficult task for most teams let alone a team that is building a MCC.

-Clinton-