Best Intake
 

Is there any consensus forming on what is the most successful style of intake, in terms of speed, consistency, and intake area, between the El Toro intake, the over the top one, the Simbot SS style one, the two grabbers, as well as others I forgot to mention?

Re: Best Intake
 

971 type of intake is the best type of intake.

Re: Best Intake
 

As Captain Obvious would say: the best intake is the one that gets the ball into your robot quickly and reliably. Any of several styles can do this, if you sweat the details and get it right.

For three excellent and quite different examples, see 1114, 1986, and 2337.

Re: Best Intake
 

Check out ours: http://youtu.be/TU76Xct-mHY?t=39s

We use a standard horizontal roller with two sideways rollers to center the ball. Using the side rollers, we can quickly pick up a ball from any angle across the full width of the robot and even from the sides of the intake. It won us the Excellence in Engineering Award at the Arizona Regional.

842 also built a unique and effective intake. It's prominently featured in their reveal video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgk_jnu2tD0

Re: Best Intake
 

That pickup is slick, I also like the effective over the top pickups that have been made. Similar to the VexPro Build Blitz teams. The 1114, 179, 118, 233 pickups that are all similar to the 971 pickup in some way are all very effective. I honestly, after this weekend have learned to strongly dislike the toro intakes. However, when done well. The toro intake is still effective.

My main favorite for now is the over the top intake.

Re: Best Intake
 

The over the top roller intake works so well because it doesn't rely on the robot being in exactly the right place, and it also "grabs" the ball instead of letting it bounce off the robot. The key is that it pushes the ball against the floor, so it can grip immediately.

The 842 grabber relies on some serious control system magic to make it so effective.

Some intakes naturally work well, and that's the one that you want to make if you don't have the ability to perfect a less optimal design.

Re: Best Intake
 

Those are either photocells or ultrasonic distance, or vex touch sensors they have on the grabbers to detect the ball's presence automatically. Simple magic maybe. Effective nonetheless.

Re: Best Intake
 

Really? I thought it was an IR imaging system, with onboard processing.

Re: Best Intake
 

We have a similar intake and I believe we are using an infrared sensor to close our paddles around the ball. (I could be totally wrong, I'm not an electronics guy).

Re: Best Intake
 

2481 has a really nice intake. Approach angle can be almost anywhere.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/40169

Re: Best Intake
 

It is an IR sensor.

Re: Best Intake
 

Gotta love how a judge knows more about my robot than me. CAD team problems :p

Re: Best Intake
 

I'm more impressed I didn't have to consult my notes.

Re: Best Intake
 

I'm just happy our robot was that memorable!

Re: Best Intake
 

My apologies for the hubris I must have to say that a feature of my team's robot might be among "the best" at anything... but I really think a claw intake with some mechanism to pick up balls from the side is the most effective game piece manipulator this year.

Roller bar intakes ("16-style", seen on nearly every low catapult) are by no means bad, but many of them have limitations in how they can pick up balls. Lots of these intakes can hit a ball away from them if the intake is spun into the ball. Some of these have trouble with ejecting a ball. Almost all of them have some kind of "free" state between the ball entering the robot and seating on the catapult, leaving a little potential for dropping the ball. All of these disadvantages can be designed around to the point where they are extremely effective, though.

Claw intakes (as in, at least a top roller, "1114 style") have some unique inherent advantages regardless of design, particularly claws that articulate open / closed. A proper top roller claw intake will always contact the ball with a moving part first regardless of angle of entry. A top roller claw is unless articulated open always in contact with the ball for ejection. Articulating the claw allows for a second method to dislodge the ball from the robot in case of failure.

For a top roller claw to be effective, it needs some method of centering a ball. Many different ways to do this. Teams like 971 and 118 use the geometry of their claw structure to force the ball into the center of the claw as it enters. Other teams like 195 built a literal "CD7" - a set of side rollers added on to bring the ball in. Still others, like 2590, used mecanum wheels on the claw to center the ball and intake it from the side. This method also seems to do better with picking up balls from directly to the side of the claw, which makes sense.

In my opinion, 2791 had one of the best intakes at our two events with a combination of good claw geometry, an articulated top roller, and mecanum wheels. At Tech Valley our intake was very solid. At Finger Lakes it was almost as good, but our shooter modification made it a bit more prone to dropping the ball. I believe 2590 / 971 / others are a fair bit better, and I'd love to see them in person.

Pinch claws can be good this year and as a concept are underrated, but I really just see no advantage to them at all. A roller claw can achieve the same grip strength if spring loaded / articulated. To be blunt, I have not seen a Toro intake in person that is as effective as a top roller claw or a roller bar intake.

Re: Best Intake
 

Using catapults, I'm going for 610's intake. At first I was skeptical of the need for an intake like theirs, but I've since seen plenty of robots stuff themselves using their own intake because it has to move out of the way, outside the frame perimeter, ready to be hit back inside the frame perimeter by a defending robot.

For linear punches, I'm going for 971. It can intake a ball in multiple scenarios, including a bouncing ball.

Re: Best Intake
 

Check out 1718 top roller design, it is done really well. The top roller is spring loaded, and has about 4" of travel, to keep contact with the ball while controlling pressure on the roll, and the sides of the arm is made of some material that flexes and springs back into position.

It was a thing of ugly beauty.

We have 1x2 thick wall aluminum tube that has not broken, but we have cracked welds after each weekend.

1718 has the bend but don't break design, that just works better. Nice job Pi.

Re: Best Intake
 

My team uses a top roller intake with two mechanum wheels to center the ball. It worked very well for us at Waterloo, although we had some issues with getting the arm height right. You can see it here. Sorry it is hard to see, it is the only video we have online right now.

Re: Best Intake
 

I thought Spectrum's (3847) El Toro was pretty effective, as well as 148's.

233's punch was very impressive, it didn't have anything to center it besides a Frisbee, and even when it was off center, it still shot accurately and consistently.

But there have been great bar roller intakes too, the ones that pop into my head are 33's and 254's. 1538 refined this even more to keep pressure and account for variable compressions of the competition balls with the sliding rollers.

Also, not sure what category they go into, but 610's articulated rollers are pretty cool.

I don't see the advantage of a non-roller or pinch setup over a well-built roller system, seems like added complexity for no real benefit.

Re: Best Intake
 

We are pretty proud of ours. Its fast and it remains in contact with the ball for fast low goal dumps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IdCf6WS4oU

Re: Best Intake
 

We made use of bevel gears so that we could have both top rollers and side rollers. This allowed us to glide over the ball from more than just one direction for pickup and was one of the reasons we were able to go 18-0-0 at the Hawaii Regional this past weekend. It also made it so that our second ball for our two ball auto could be put to the side to more easily touch our alliance partner's bot.

Haven't been able to upload Saturday matches, but here are our Friday ones.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...18#post1366218

Re: Best Intake
 

Sorry Chris, but the geometry of our claw isn't what centers the ball. The bottom tusks spin, actively centering the ball. We have an acceptance range that is over 20" wide, wider than is possible with geometry alone. I have yet to see any other robot which spins the lower part of the claw (but I'll happily be corrected if someone else knows of one.)

Re: Best Intake
 

Wow. Thanks for the props. Being complimented by the #1 Waterford seed with an incredible Autonomous is good for the ego!

The vertical arms are made from 1/4" expanded PVC for stiffness, with 1/8" lexan laminated to the outside. The foamed PVC give stiffness, and if(when) it cracks, the lexan allows us to keep playing. Team 16 the bomb squad's 2008 pickup inspired ours.

Re: Best Intake
 

3927 has a claw with wheels on the top and bottom, they have a really fast intake as well. Team 16, and 4522 both have a very fast and reliable feeder. I haven't seen any el toro style intakes that are as fast and easy to load as the horizontal beater bar or claw, but I haven't seen all of the robots so one probably exists.

Re: Best Intake
 

I would humbly submit 95's 'carwash intake' for your consideration in this thread. Our 2014 over-the-bumper design is an evolution of our 2012 over-the-bumper intake.

The key features are shaping the arms at a radius slightly larger than the ball so that the robot can turn sideways onto a ball and collect it instead of knocking it away. The cut-out also allows us to pick up the ball completely off-center, making our effective pickup width a little bit wider than the 29in width of our robot. Using drawer liner as the 'carwash flaps' allows us to have a very high linear speed on the OD of the intake, but will collapse down and allow us to effectively (but not overly) pinch a large variance in ball OD. When the roller starts to pinch the ball and load up/collapse, the smaller OD gives the intake more torque with which to pull the ball in/out. They are also very easy to package because the flaps collapse down, and it is very easy to pass the ball from one side's intake to the other. Being collapsible also means that they are very damage tolerant. Along those lines the whole intake was deployed with relatively low-force cylinders which allows a defender (or a wall, or a low goal) to push the intake back into our robot without damaging either us or the defender.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/supato...57643219020225

Re: Best Intake
 

2481 gets my vote. In Wisconsin they dominated the field with their intake combined with the swerve. The 270 deg. design coupled with the 4 bar linkage is simply the best that I have seen this year (and also unique)

Re: Best Intake
 

I've seen many intakes through out two competitions so far.

During Palmetto, there were bots that had good and bad intakes but, I believe 3571 (my team) had one of the best there, I dont want to sound cocky, but many teams came to us telling us about it (Facts)

During NorthBay though, everything was a lot different there were different types of intakes and the one that really caught my eye was 610. I love how they used those rollers for everything and it wasnt in their way when they were shooting. It was really well engineered. Also 1114 used the same kind of intake like they used for their 2007 bot I believe. It was quite unique and it worked well for them. Sad to see they lost at GT-W due to that one Penalty.

Our youtube has few videos of our bot, many more will be posted!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxE...H66XXMv670HMkA

-3571 Operator
@FRC3571

Re: Best Intake
 

As with every year, there is no way to determine a "best" design. Hundreds of teams with the same style of design will have hundreds of different results. It's all about implementation of the design and how well it works with the rest of the features on the robot.

For example, 1405 used the traditional roller-bar intake. It's probably the most common one for this game, so how can it be any better or worse than any other? We iterated several variables in the design over the 6 week build season, as well as post-bag with a practice bot, until we found what we believed to optimize the intake. Coupling the design we set on to work best with out mecanum drive base, our intake fit our robot very well and was easily the best feature of our robot. It was at least good enough that Team 20 awarded us with the "Black Hole Award" for "A Collector that Game Pieces Gravitate Towards." Was it the best intake at FLR? Eh. But I'm, personally, very proud of it.

If you try and rank designs from "worst" to "best" you'll always find anomalies, such as a powerhouse team using a design you thought was "worst" and dominating regionals, or lower-tier teams using the "best" design and being unable to intake a ball their entire competition.

Throughout the season, I've seen amazing claw intakes, roller intakes, "toro's" and grabbers, and I've seen useless claw intakes, roller intakes, toro's and grabbers. It's less about the design, more about the process.

Re: Best Intake
 

I like this post a lot, if anyone wants to see what the process can look like. See our blog post about our intake.

Re: Best Intake
 

461's intake was one of my favorites this year - http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/39939 Used 3 rollers connected to one another via bevel gears and it was very effective.

Re: Best Intake
 

I think 254 deserves some credit for there intake. Not only is it double sided but its fast, durable, simple and does not get in there way when shooting.

Re: Best Intake
 

I still have yet to see another intake like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sg4yAD2YPY

Plus they also shoot on the run, very important this year with defense.

Note the excellent driving at 1:42

They will be at the NEDCMP.

Re: Best Intake
 

Hard to say if it is the best intake, but it might be the best intake video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LFdVrL54o&

Re: Best Intake
 

Humble shoutout to my team for being the only team I've seen this year to effectively use a forklift as an intake mechanism. Everyone's got rollers this year, but a simple and lightweight ball scooper seems to work just fine for us.

Re: Best Intake
 

a variety of intakes are effective: single siders like 2046, 3393, 4488 and 2928 (can you tell I'm from the pacific Northwest yet?), double siders like cheesy poofs and 488, 1114 bots like titanium and 1114 all are effective. I have yet to see an el toro that matches up to the over the top mechanisms, and grabbers/suction are not a good idea for collection: if they work, it's barely (3218 has the most effective I have seen up in my little corner of FIRST, and they made it from a bunch of household objects: they won multiple awards for it)

Re: Best Intake
 

See 4055, NRG.

You have a real hard time convincing me that a forklift is 'good enough' under any reasonable amount of defense though.

Re: Best Intake
 

The good thing about a wheeled/el toro intake, over a forklift, intake is that the wheels/sticks grip the ball. A forklift intake never grips the ball, so I doubt it would hold the ball through defense.

Re: Best Intake
 

I wonder why it would be an imaging system. I mean. If I understand the concept of the intake well enough all you need to do to make the intake truely effective is to be able to detect the ball once it reaches the optimum distance range between the grabbers/distance from the bumper so that it automatically grabs the ball.

I've been developing an intake that functions almost exactly like theirs does and it's working almost exactly like theirs with only a Maxbotics sonar sensor to detect the distance.