Plans for hanging
 

I know we had a thread similar to this at the beginning of the season, but I figured now that teams are deciding on final designs, I'd ask this question...what is your team planning to do with the pyramid?

Re: Plans for hanging
 

30 for us.

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10 unless our hanging team develops a 30 point hanger in time.

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30 points here.

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30 points or bust.

Quite literally.

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30 points here, our team quickly realized that a climbing mechanism capable of ascending the 3 levels in sequential order is quite complex and leaves no room for a shooter. We are however adding a dumper if space allows

Re: Plans for hanging
 

I guess the eventual plan is to go for 30 points, but we've yet to design something concrete towards that. I think that's going to go over in the iteration stage. Right now there is a concrete design and fabrication of a 10 pointer, and plans for a 20 pointer perhaps by our week 1 event. We'll see what goes on.

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We're trying to build our robot very space consciously, and then we will worry about the climber.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

30 points

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We plan for a easy 10. It seems to be more logical considering the game. If you have a good shooter, you could bank almost 30 pts or more while someone is hanging on the 3rd bar.

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We tested our 30 pointer yesterday, worked incredibly! We also have a shooter that can shoot in any goal consistently. For once, we can do everything all around quite well it seems! Though it isn't all completed quite yet, it all works flawlessly completed.

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So if this poll is an accurate representation of what teams are going to do this season, about 3-4 teams will attempt a 30 point hang this season per match. If that many teams could do it successfully every match this year I will eat my robot.

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I'll go a step further and eat my entire alliance :yikes:

I think we'll see on average 1 successful climber per match, but probably 3 failed 30 point climbs. A lot of teams may inadvertently become 20 point climbers.

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Our priority is the 10. We will make sure we at least have a 10 for competition. We currently have plans for an effective 30 point but we are still working on final design and finding space on out robot. If we can make it work then we will probably have a 30 for out second regional.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

I think we have a design that works for 30 point climbing (we know our prototype can climb and transition between rungs, it would just be a question of CG placement), but we decided at the end of week 2 that our shooter would be the priority. The mounting for it coupled with some part lead times for that design mean we're falling back on a 10 point climb now.

I still think this poll is too high with an even split based on the difficulty of the 30 point climb. My guess is more teams will run into the same issues or that some of the climbers won't work quite as well as hoped. Time will tell.

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We designed a 30 point climber, just don't know how fast it is but it works.

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I am absolutely astounded at the number of teams who claim they can 30 point climb.

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Don't be. The difference between what teams think they can do and what they can actually do has always been quite large.

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True, but in most of these challenges it's an analog thing. Can you shoot? Well maybe you make 10% of the shots you take. Then you'd be classified as a robot that can't shoot. If you're a shooter that makes 90% of your shots that's excellent.

For a third level climb, either you make it or you don't. If you climb 90% of the time but fail 10% of the time you're still just as broken when you fall from six feet. I wouldn't risk my robot if I didn't have 99.999% safety.

Either we're going to see lots of climbing or there will be lots of robots who can't do anything this year.

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I am willing to bet that the ratio of unintentional 20-point climbs to intentional 20-point climbs will be quite high. Ditto for the unintentional to intentional 10s. We won't talk about the other unintentional--the zero-point non-belayed one--other than to say, ouch.

And yes, I've noticed that optimism is always contagious, at least until Thursday at the regional and possibly even Saturday at the regional. Then reality sets in, often sometime around lunch.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

Hopefully you aren't going to any regionals I'm going to! :ahh:

In all seriousness. The size constraints coupled with the the two tasks being so different from one another, it produces a rough situation. I know we are going for 30 point hang, but we have yet to achieve it. In fact, we haven't achieved any climbing :eek: :eek:

But the plan is to perform a level 3 climb while also being able to pick up frisbees, and shoot in any goal. The trick will be if we can get all of the sub-systems to fit.

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I'm sure this was the plan for many teams. There are only 2 weeks left though. That's why we dropped the 30 point climber at the beginning of this week. Maybe if we make Champs we'll find a way to fit it on for there.

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I have a feeling that there will be many teams that are attempting 30 that will in fact only get 10 in their matches if that, and often slower than those who designed for 10 in the first place.

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You mean you didn't see all of those full-court shooters last year? ;)

Climbing optimism will drop off the map like the robots that will unfortunately drop off the pyramid. Cynicism and my heart rate will remain high during the endgame.

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10.

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Yep. Alot can go wrong in 3 weeks, so I wouldnt be surprised if by week 5 the numbers are astonishingly different.

As for us, thankfully our climbing plans havent failed yet!

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Our strategy revolves around the climb and dump. We have a shooter in the works, but it will probably only be effective during our first regional as an autonomous scoring mechanism. We hope to both climb and shoot at Spokane.

As far as the actual functionality of our climber, I can't say for certain. All of our prototypes climbed with ease, but we have yet to receive key parts for making our actual chassis climb. *fingers crossed. :D

Re: Plans for hanging
 

You, Adam, are a very smart man.

We're going for 30, plus the dump. Like everyone else on this thread, I am 100% certain that we will suceed. The problem is, I recognise that probably only 10% (or less) of people that try to climb for 30 will suceed. Let's be honest here, climbing is so dificult and unknown a task that even experienced teams who are fully dedicated to it are not guarenteed to suceed.

I think people fail to recognise that this year shooting is easy enough that a shooter can outscore a climber in many circumstances. If I beleive this, then why are we going for 30? Because a semi-guarenteed 50 points per match in quals is extremely attractive, and, well, if we succeed, it will be awesome.

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Yes, yes it will. We're going up in similar ways, best of luck in the coming weeks as the climbing mechanism comes together!

-Mike

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We will be hanging for ten points just for a little extra points after shooting for the entire match.

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Originally planned a 30 point climb but due to focusing a lot of attention on getting our shooter dialed in, we've come to realize the 30 point may be hard to accomplish with what time we have. We're still trying to find a work around for it but we at least know we can make a 10-point climb relatively quickly if all else fails.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

Don't forget... the title of this thread & the poll is PLANS for Hanging, not "where will you hang in competition" :) The teams aren't claiming they CAN do it.. they are just telling you they PLAN to do it. I suspect this poll would be different if posted in two or three weeks.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

Truthfully, everyone should be able to 10 pt hang. You can do it with a passive mechanism that requires nothing more than a functional drivetrain.

I'll even go so far as to say if your team's OPR < 10 this year, I'm probably not interested in having you on my alliance.

EDIT: Also, stop to think of it... This year is probably the single best year for OPR as a metric since 2008 when it was popularized.

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Right-o. We *plan* on climbing -- building on our success in 2010 (but with lessons learned... evil set screws will not be our bane this year!) -- to 30 points and then dumping in four colored disks... And if it doesn't work, we'll have wasted an enormous amount of effort, energy, and money while settling for much less.

Which is why we have a shooter but no floor pickup. We figured out pretty quickly that we couldn't do it all, so we shot for three tasks:

Drive.
Shoot.
Climb to 30.

Our top priority in designing a climbing mechanism is to maintain stable contact with the pyramid at all times, so in case of a power failure or some such we just freeze in place and nothing... unduly exciting and gravity-related occurs.

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Last year how many teams were confident that they could shoot and how many could? How many teams could hit over 50% of their shots, how many 80% and that was a much easier task.

I see a lot of heartbreak this year and also a lot of robots that won't even pass inspection.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

As far as I'm concerned, without posted video, it didn't happen.

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I honestly think that for mid level teams it mostly boils down to either have a good shooter or climbing for 30 pts. I find it hard to actually accomplish both... I not saying it won't happen... It will happen but for a small percentage of team. My team is a mid level team that is why we are focused on building a robot that climbs for 30 pts. If we could add a frisbee dumper that would awesome but it is not our goal.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

Our original design was a corner climber with a dumper mechanism. The problem is the dumper mechanism simply didn't fit over our climber in a position that it could also get over the corner of the pyramid in the 30 pt position to dump the colored discs.

Our final design is a corner climber with a small linear shooter at a fixed steep angle. It shoots the discs into the pyramid goal with a very little force that causes them to pop up and fall backward. Ideally the shooter will also be able to make it into the top goal during autonomous. We'll see how much of this actually comes together. At this point, I'm most confident in the climb and less in everything else :)

-Mike

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This is what my team is doing we are in the final process of assembling our practice and competition bot.

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As of a few days ago, we're going for 10. Best effort to reward ratio by far.

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I can tell you team 25 2013 robot will be the most complex we have ever done. Cad drawings look great but we are still in a wait and see. We will be going for 30 but physics might have another plan for us.

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Yup, we preferred the dumper solution as well but it just didn't work out for us.
We have a 10 pt design already working on a backup robot. I hope we will never have to use it, but it's there in case we do.
We're in the same boat. We've had to redo the CAD 5 or 6 times now with the final design being figured out on a giant sheet of paper Wednesday night and then mostly finished in CAD last night. Each time the design has run into a new issue. Most of the issues have been around either the top box at the top of the pyramid or the dimensions of the robot. The 54" diameter circle is fine, but the maximum size of the robot (112" perimeter) has caused us considerable problems. Additionally, the minimum edge of a bumper being 8" has ruined many of the workarounds. Very tricky problem given the rules.

Re: Plans for hanging
 

Ditto here. The concept for the climbing mechanism isn't the problem to get to the 3rd level - it is the width of the 3rd level bar at that point, interference with the vertical poles sticking out, how close the top horizontal bar is beneath the pyramid goal, etc... It is a very, very tight fit at that level. I think many teams, if they haven't built a mechanism, and tested it, will find that there are a lot of interferences to achieving the top level. I don't think this is something you can "bolt on" after you have built your robot. This has to be carefully integrated into the entire design.

Every time we thought we had it, we found another place where we would run into a bar, get caught on our bumpers, hit the "ceiling" under the pyramid goal, interfer with our shooter, violate the frame parameter, and so on. As of last night, we think we finally have a working solution. Dispite this, we still may not have the ability to hit the 3rd level at our week one regional. The complexity of the mechanism is going to require a lot of programming support to make it work. 10 pts, no problem. 20 pts, probably. 30 pts, possibly not until our week 5 event, if at all.

Despite what this poll says, I'm going to have to agree with what I believe PC said a couple of weeks ago - there will be regionals where no one can make this climb. My prediction: 2% - 3% of the teams will be able to do this.

This has to be the hardest, most complicated game I've ever seen the GDC develop - that's what makes it so much fun!

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Especially true when applied to your (our) own team. We have grand plans, but until I see them fulfilled (and watch our own video) I won't believe it myself. Shooters are easy to mock up. There are lots of videos. We have our own. Climbers (complete functional systems) are hard to mock up. I haven't seen any video yet. Including our own. Perhaps some video will show up in the next week as teams complete their all-in-one "mockup/prototype/competition" climbers. Perhaps not.

As some reporter once said, "The people who are talking don't know what's going on, and the people who know what's going on aren't talking". Maybe we won't see anything until after bag day.

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Perhaps human players will be so dominant that robots shooting discs will be obsolete in the last 30 seconds. Robots needs to do something. ;)

I thought a climb that was ruled illegal in progress was worth zero points even if a legal 10 or 20 point climb was part of the proceeding sequence of events.

3.1.5.2 ... "If a CLIMB is considered unacceptable (e.g. a ROBOT has touched non-adjacent Levels or more than two (2) Levels at a time), a Referee will indicate a rejected CLIMB by turning the offending ROBOT’S PLAYER STATION LED strings yellow. The ROBOT will be ineligible for CLIMB points unless and until it begins a new CLIMB from the floor, Level 0. "

We're hoping to not need a 30 point climb in most matches. Having a robot fall from 90 inches could end a tournament or possibly even a season. Will the robot be capable of a 30 point climb? That's the dream. We're still working towards that dream. :rolleyes:

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I think Eric meant that teams that intended to climb for 30 were only able to climb for 20, not because of being an illegal climb...but because the robot is incapable of the 30 pt climb.

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Or that it takes much too long and the match stops with them half way through zones/some unforeseen part hangs below the 3rd zone/myriad of other ways for it to hang below what's supposed to happen.

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At first, I was blown away by the idea that half of the teams plan to climb for 30 points. We aren't one of them. We're going for 10.

I agree that many will try, some will succeed. But I also wanted to point out that the teams represented in the survey may not accurately represent all teams in FIRST. Typically the teams that post on CD are the more active and ambitious teams. There are many teams that struggle, and they probably won't do a lot of climbing or posting on Chief Delphi. So my guess is that the actual percentage of 30 point climbers will be significantly lower.

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If we can get our 30 point climber to fit on our robot it will be the most epic climb ever (we plan on being upside down, 10 feet in the air, attached to one corner of the pyramid and it should take us around 30 seconds).

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How do you plan to get it down?

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I could see that.

I remember in 2011 when teams designed wonderful mini-bot deployment systems only to find them 3 inches short of hitting the pole when the bumpers were put on the robot. There might be some similar challenges for teams who don't have the opportunity to work with a real pyramid before arriving at a tournament.

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We will go for 10 point hang, we have a great shooter that works well seems we can score between 30 and 50 points. 18 in Auto, then run and gun for 20 more all in the top goal for 3. That was going back and forth from the feeder station to behind the pyramid. If we shoot for the top of the pyramid for 5 we can get upto 50 without the climb. We made our drivers weave in and out of cones to simulate the course with other robots. But throw some defense and I think 30 with the climb might be alright till we work out the kinks.