Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

Is it worth making a robot that can get totes from the landfill or just go to the tote chute and have your human player pass totes. I think the human player option is a bit easier but could the landfill robots be a valuable resource? Thoughts.

Its a key part of our robot design so I hope so...

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

Whatever concept your team can make the most valuable partner to an alliance through your execution and performance.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

How many totes do you think you could acquire from the landfill, i ask because there are more totes in the human player area

Haven't run the math nor do I rember the right side up totes and in all honest I'm not going to throw out some random number. The cadders showed me something that would do three to five totes per cycle with bin potential

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I disagree.
There are 28 totes in the landfill area, plus 12 more are 'shared' on the step. So from a we've-got-them-and-they-don't standpoint, there are delta-52 totes in the "landfill area."
In the HP area there are 30 totes total.

Totes from the human player area are gated by the speed in which you can load totes onto the field. The loading process is also succeptible to errors on the human player side that result in fouls. I don't like the human loading station cause I don't know the LoS the refs have. That's a game element I can't control and I don't like not having control.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

There are advantages and disadvantages to each place you can get totes from. I think you should get totes from wherever you can figure out how to get them quickly, and make stacks with them, that you can top with a container. Since there are so many ways to do that, and there are a lot of totes in each location, it's kind of pointless to worry too much about which is "best".

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

This.

In order for an alliance to win at higher levels, it will need to be able to gather and stack totes and recycling containers from all areas of the field. In other words, both functions will be needed. I do not believe that there will be a single robot that can make level six stacks (with noodles and bins) with all three recycling containers on the alliance's side, gather the four RC's in the center and stack them (level six with pool noodles). Even the great robots will need complementary alliance partners. What's important is not so much which function you choose; rather how well and quickly you do it.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I think that it is a good idea to make sure that your robot is compatible with the strategy and robots of a high level team. I think most regionals will have 1 team able to stack 25 - 30 human player totes all by themselves.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

So you think a good team is making 5 stacks per match at a regional level. I'm going to assume then that they're leaving RC's to someone else.

How many cycles did "good" regional level cyclers do in 2013?
The elite teams did 6-7 on an empty practice field. A good regional cycler in 2013 hit 2-3 cycles. Or the equivalent of such (i.e. 4 cycles with one miss/cycle)

I think a top regional team can reasonably make 3 stacks from the human player station or the landfill, while the best will do 4-5 per match. But that's just my estimations. Prove me wrong.

In conclusion, either one can be effective. Pick one and do it really really well.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

How fast do you think a well-trained HP can get the totes into play? Ours can get under 5 seconds without any serious practice, and I expect he will be down in the 3 second range in the near future once our robot gets more together. As for fouls, trained human players could generally go the whole season last year without getting a foul, and since there were 10x more silly ways to get a foul last year than this year, I expect that our HP will be foul-less this season.

There are a couple of good reasons to choose landfill over HP station, but I don't think that speed is a good one at all. Only a handful of very good teams will be able to collect totes from the floor and add them to stacks in under 3 seconds. Most teams that go for ground pick-up will take around 10 seconds to line up with a tote even if it is out in the open, and grabbing from the landfill will at least double that.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I hope we're not "most teams". But yeah, I can sure see that happening with fork type robots.

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

Why do you care about how many totes you take away from the opposing alliance?

Re: Should You Get Totes From Landfill
 

I strongly disagree. I think that having totes that are largely restrained from movement, in a known orientation, with a back-stop on at least two sides, will be much easier to pick up that a lose tote at an arbitrary orientation on the field. It all depends on how the pick-up mechanism is designed.