Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

As the title implies, I'm wondering who is going to harvest this year. [Most] Everything I've found on Chief Delphi is about shooting, and a little bit about climbing (mostly about how hard it is, and how not to do it).
So, what are your plans?

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Have a super accurate shooter, and you may not need ground pickup. If you feel like you'll be missing a lot of shots, or will need to travel the field length each time to make shots, then you may want to pick up off the ground.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

This is a great plan as long as both of your partners are also armed with Frisbee Sniper Rifles.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

I realize that, I'm just wondering who IS going to harvest. I also wonder how many teams have a shooter that accurate. :)

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We are working on it and hope to have a successful picker-upper.

So far we have a device that can reliably lift them off the floor using two sets of wheels with a vertical axis. Our prototype call also pick them up if they are against a wall or in a corner. Hopefully we can post a pic or video this weekend.

Transport to the shooter is not solved yet but we have a prototype that works a little bit, sometimes, on good days.

Our thinking is this: the easiest way to get frisbees to shoot might be to have a good shooter down by the slots. If he misses we can pick them up and convert them. Anyway, that's the thinking.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Good strategy. We could be the robot sending discs up from the feed slots. We might score 0-10% directly, but if one or both of our alliance partners can pick up and score, it could be lots of points.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We are not planning on picking up off the floor. Hopefully we'll pick a partner who can.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Our team has a plan to pick up off the floor, but if we can't get it done we will still be able to get frisbees from the feeder station.

There will be many teams who will try but those who succeed efficiently will be few.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Always design your robot with the belief that there will not be two other robots on your alliance. Any time you rely on team members for a portion of your strategy, you will have matches that are completely outside your ability to control and you will lose.

That pretty much segways into all the design choices that we made this year. We can't do everything, but we don't rely on our alliances partners to be able to do anything.

It doesn't always work - this year is a perfect example of a year that is incredibly hard to do everything, much less do everything well. So you pick the functions that you least care about and won't really affect how your strategy plays out. I'm a big proponent of strategy-driven design, rather than design driven strategy.

That should answer your question on which direction we picked, in a round-about sort of way.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Although I selected "climb only + auto" we may not do auto. Depends on how our testing goes once we have our bot built.
This year's slogan: "There are discs?"

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We are picking up from the floor. We will be one of the best dang floor pickups there are*.


*maybe

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We think that it's important, my personal reasoning being that you can't be sure whether or not every match will be perfectly beneficial for a human loaded or floor loaded system. Having a consistent human loaded shooter will make you a good second pick in most elims, and being able to clean up your opponents frisbees and either feeding them or scoring them yourself will make you a great third pick anywhere at the very least.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Depending on where you're playing, having a good human loaded shooter could mean you're picking your alliance. Having a harvester that works only in autonomous, combined with that good human loaded shooter, might put you in the top five.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Our first goal was feeder station and good shooter which we have completed and we have our hanging mechanism getting completed, now we have a sub group working on floor pick up. We left room in the robot so if we wanted to add anything room was there such as after a tournament etc.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

It was nearly unanimous on the day after kickoff that we wanted to pickup from the floor.

A few days later we decided that picking up off the floor was going to be the last thing on our list.

With our limited resources this year we decided that spending time on floor pickup probably wasn't worth our time as it doesn't gain you points (except in autonomous) just "options". With that said we are focusing on a shooter and climber. At this time floor pickup doesn't look so good for us due to the constraint's given to us (54" rule...) and our strategy.

How long would it take to scoop up and accurately shoot 10 disks scattered about the field for 30 points? Probably longer than climbing the tower for 30. (depending on your climber.) ;)

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Our team is actively pursuing floor pickup with some decent results. Our intake system will likely be a bit different from others, but prototypes show some great success. The real difficulty in this is working dimensions so this system will fit in the frame perimeter and the 54" cylinder.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We have created a system for picking up frisbees that is just as fast our intake last year for basketballs (we attached it to our robot from last year and were picking up frisbee in sight). If there are no frisbees to pick up, we are planning on being able to load our robot through the feeding station.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

"frisbee sniper rifles"
first, lolz.
second, we have one:D

we decided day one that we were going to focus on a shooter instead of picking up, mostly because of the smaller frame and some of our thoughts on climbing.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Having floor pickup will be critical for those teams that want to seed high. A team with a good harvester and shooter and decent programmers could score up to 54 points in autonomous. That's probably enough to clinch the second-order ranking sort, and possibly win most regional/district matches.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

I agree with Pat here guys. Any team that isn't making an intake, you are missing out on on seeding high where other teams will be making plenty in autonomous.

(This year's ranking system is dictated by auto score after qualification scores)

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Entirely this. If you make a floor pickup that you only ever use in autonomous, you'll be in the top 8. The ability to score 42 points alone in autonomous will win most matches.

Assume you're on an alliance with two robots that can preload and score 3 frisbees each. If you can score 3, pick up the remaining 4 on your side of the field, and score those, you have the potential of starting the match with 78 points. If only you score, you're still at 42.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

With the smaller dimensions this year, it'll be hardish to pick up 2 at a time with out jamming. Yes, its not too difficult to make your pickup wide enough to pick up 2 if you line up correctly. But to do that and feed it into you hopper without jamming is a different thing. And to do it quickly...

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

How many teams picked up off the bridge successfully last year? How many had intakes?

Just making three every time might hurt you at the Championship, but I don't think it's nearly as bad at the regional level as you guys are making it out to be.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

That's what happened with our team to.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Oh no, the 'Poofs are doing a 9 disc autonomous? :ahh:

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

We have all but written off floor pickup, but we have a napkin-sketch contingency should the game change between Palmetto and South Florida.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

I think 179 from 2011 would have a pretty good argument to refute this.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

With the attempt to at least explore floor harvesting options is a must.
However, the difference between trying to do it vs. deciding not to (focused solely on feeder loading) will save you at least 2 weeks of build season pain.:eek:

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Depends on where you go.

Early events will be decided by who can play the game consistently while later weeks require you to consistently perform most/all of the game to be successful.

Lucky for us we are attending both a week 1 and week 6 event so our strategy requires us to be prepared for both ends of the playing field. :rolleyes:

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

It would have been, if "number of tubes picked up off floor" was how seeding was determined.

To argue against myself for a minute, after WLT, autonomous score is what determines seeding. You have a hard limit of 18 points unless you floor load. This is really THE reason to consider floor loading this year. Other strategies are all secondary to autonomous mode in this regard.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Especially at championships. At most regionals, you could slide and do well with a 3 disc auton, but at championships, you had better have something up your sleeve if you're not going for floor pickup.

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

my team isn't having a harvester. Instead we have a rectangular shooter with plexiglass (or something, i dont know specifics) on top. The bottom of that reaches the bottom of the feeder slot and slides down into the storage area. So we feed 3 frisbees from the feeder slot DIRECTLY TO THE STORAGE AREA, then drive off and shoot, come back, and repeat until the climb

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

Depends on how far you want to go at CMP. If you just want to make eliminations the bar is definitely lower, as the 2012 alliance scores in Hybrid mode during quarterfinal matches speak for themselves.



If you want to win your division I agree, there is a significant uptick of "perfect" (36 pt) autonomouses if you plot all elimination matches played. It will be interesting to see how difficult picking up and scoring frisbees is relative to getting balls off the bridge (or from your alliance partners). Will we see the A-Bomb on Einstein again?

Re: Who Is Planning On Harvesting Fribees Off The Floor?
 

I was under the assumption that everyone who is weighing the option of picking up discs on the floor vs only going to the feeder station is aiming at going as far as possible at championships. ;)