Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

I think your underestimating what possession is. I imagine this is going to be one of those things that is judged based on the spirit of the rule, rather than a strictly literal interpretation, because it is nearly impossible to agree on one. And what I see is that the intent of this rule is that for a robot to count as possessing a ball, it must do something in order to advance the ball towards the goal. I don't think that refs are going to count randomly pushing the ball for a second as an assist. If I was a ref, I would say that each robot must make some attempt to bring the ball closer to the goal before it can count as an assist; if the robot does not seem to be contributing to their alliance, they aren't really assisting.

I would be a lot happier if the GDC could offer a better clarification on what a possession is, that way it isn't based on the interpretation of some random ref that will be different at every competition.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

Wait, crap... totally forgot that I needed to build an intake. :eek:

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

If you haven't tried pushing the ball around with a plain drivetrain yet, I highly suggest you try it. It's fun when it gets stuck in the corners.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

If I were part of a team losing out on an assist because such an interpretation from a referee, you can be certain one of the students would immediately question it and ask to be shown the rule supporting it.

What do you find deficient about the definition in the manual?

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

it is being looked at, extensively. because once we get the ball we want to keep it.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

Watching the Build Blitz and the Robot in 3 days kind of mislead me about the difficulty of the intake mechanism. Their intakes seem very simple, but there is a lot of complex geometry and black magic behind improving those mechanisms.

Our shooter prototype has seen the most progress, but our intake prototypes are the ones taking the most time currently, and rightfully so. So much of the game depends on a good intake that can bring the ball in, eject it out, and control it for a pass. Perhaps we are making this harder than it should be...

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

I promise you, its not that hard... Especially with CAD available, these game pieces are really easy to pick up.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8du0...feature=gp-n-y

Here is our intake idea. Not fully formed yet because the arms don't go all the way into the robot yet but you get the idea.

*Ignore the boot. Moving to a catapult today.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

I think you'll find come competition season that your hard work will be rewarded. Any team that does a direct copy of the robot in three days intakes will be sorely surprised to find out that passing isn't as easy as they thought. I have seen very few intakes so far that will excel at passing the ball to a teamamte. Those who have developed them are wise to keep them a secret.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

Unless you want to be on a team where someone passes the ball to you...

Ours:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFEBf...re=c4-overview

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

I'll help you guys out and spill the beans on this secret.

Just turn off the intake halfway through picking up the ball. Reverse the intake to put the ball down. The ball is very secure in the meantime.

This is trivial to automate as well (IR or ultrasonic range-finders work great).

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

The proverbial cat just left the bag.

Steal from the best, invent the rest!

Oh, and rolly grabbers.

5 weeks to Stop Build!

-Mike

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

I think the reason you're not seeing that many threads about ball acquisition is because it isn't as difficult as figuring out how to launch the danged thing in the air!

More people are gonna discuss shooting because this game piece is big, bulky, and difficult to get far. There may be less threads for ball acquisition, because that idea is much more straightforward. Teams have used rollers to intake balls in past games, so as far as I can tell, we just need to build bigger roller intakes.

It is also true that teams have built shooters for balls in the past, but making bigger shooters isn't exactly how you're gonna solve shooting. You gotta have more power to shoot, and a way to control that. You don't need to amp up the power as much when using a rolling intake.

The difference is that the solution to the intake is to make it bigger, but the solution for shooting is to make it more powerful, which is much more challenging.

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

Picking up isn't the hard part, it's making sure the ball stays in, and using the same mechanism to pick up the ball and eject it for a pass, all while fitting it in with our shooter's geometry is the hard part :(

Re: Something Is Being Overlooked People
 

2 and 3 have been where we have spent a lot of time. The geometry to be able to spit the ball back out of a loaded shooter is pretty tricky.