Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I do think it took on average about 20 seconds for teams to pick up game pieces on the ground. I'll be watching match videos from the past 4 years tonight and posting my observations here. We'll see how bad my memory is then. :)

Many of the grabbers I have seen grab from the sides of the totes, which would make it easier to grab a tote out in the open than one in the landfill. Visibility will also be a concern for totes in the landfill, since there will be other totes/robots/stacks in between the drivers and the robot.

If anything, I would say that the average time would be longer than that, since just 1 team that can't pick up a piece at all would greatly skew the mean. Median would probably be a better measure. I'm curious then, if 20s is so far off, how long do you think it took the median team to pick up game pieces over the past few years? Ignoring 2013 since most teams didn't bother to pick up off of the ground

Generally a fair assumption, but I was at 2 regular seasonFRC events last year, as well as championships and 2 offseason events, and I spent most of my weekends livestreaming events. MN certainly is below average relative to other regions, although we are getting better.

I do tend to be very pessimistic in my predictions of game scores and robot abilities, but I don't think this has anything to do with me being in MN. It probably is more just me trying to counteract the kids on my team who predict that average teams will make 6-tote stacks in under 30 seconds.:eek:

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

We have ask a student to simulate a robot, with perfect vision and perfect coordination, it takes 35 seconds to stack a tote of six from the feeding station and bring in to the scoring area and back. I expect a robot at the regional level to take at least twice that much time to do it. A lot of students really underestimate the amount of time require to do one cycle in a real competition.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

How many trips back and forth did the student make? In our simulations, the driving to and from the feeder station (and lining up properly) takes the most time. An internal-stacking robot only needs to make one round trip. With a fast intake, it can stack totes as quickly as they can be sent through the chute. We are aiming for creating stacks 5/6 tall with bins on top in under 30 seconds. I would anticipate seeing one or two robots with (close to) this capability at every competition. I am hoping that ours is one of those.....

The "average" robot will be different...

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

Exactly. Our team is going to work on dropping totes from HP area and from landfill. Our thoughts are that if we can do both, then if our alliance partners can only do one, we can divide and conquer, getting more points and staying out of each others way

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I think most people are overestimating the difficulty of picking up totes from the landfill. From the little experimenting I have done we have found some ways that are simple, but effective. I would predict that a full 6 tote cycle with a container could be done in 30-40 seconds. This puts one robots score potential at 108 pts if you assume 3 cycles in 2 minutes and no litter since you are so far from the HP. (168 with a 3 tote auton and coop ;) )

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

My predictions: yes, getting totes from the landfill is a viable strategy, even without knowing how the game will play out.

I think this year's Regional elims will come down to the state of the field after autonomous. Teams with little to no controlled autonomous will aim to keep the field as clear as possible in order to minimize obstacles around the scoring platforms. Alliances with an "ok" autonomous that litter the field will be slowed enough that they will be easily passed by 4 other alliances in QF's. Alliances with great, or at least clean, autonomous routines will have a very easy advantage in QF's, and probably also SF's.

Assuming a clean autonomous (RC's upright, not in the immediate vicinity of the first teleop actions; yellow totes aren't in the way either), I think it is much more difficult for forklifts with arms to deal with the field than the HP loading. The driver has to be pretty precise to break up & stack totes since they're at all different kinds of angles.

I think forklift hooks will be much better at the landfill totes than forklift arms in the early weeks, but only if the driver has something to help square up to the totes. After all, the hooks have a lift obscuring the driver's vision and precision alignment will be tricky if the hook depends on an exact center alignment. Forklift hooks also have to deal with tote sag, but there are some pretty nifty passive ways to do that.

Towards the end of the season, most teams will have figured out the tricks of the field to maximize the points their robot gets. This will help in quals where there are 3 robots who like HP loading, for example.