Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1440509)

While G17 makes it clear that we can't react against the HORIZONTAL surface of the step, we ARE allowed to react against the vertical side. We are lining up the plow blade and pushing. There is plenty of room to line up.

I'm sort of surprised that, in all the discussion about accessing the recycling containers on the step, people are only talking about ways to reach over the landfill. Why not just move it?

Originally Posted by IronicDeadBird (Post 1441296)

So the concept behind the snow plow is based more or less on playing pool. When you start up a game you break apart the triangle of balls and then pick off easy shots. If you look at our robots design you will see that it can handle multiple totes at once, but the time it takes to get to these totes and be ready to pickup isn't instantaneous, we have a lift we need to adjust (we got rid of a lot of alignment time with el toro but its still there). When we crack open the field or goal is to space totes out so we have quick pickup lines and no idle time where the gap between two totes is large enough that our mechanisms are ready to pickup a tote by the time we get to our next tote. The other advantage of this as in pool is when you break it open you have the chance of moving totes closer to where you need them. With vision drivers should be able to quickly identify pickup lines by tote orientation and looking for basic patterns one of the key ones I imagine is a path of totes roughly in the same orientation that starts close to the scoring platform dives a bit into landfill then comes back out. What I do not want to happen is that drivers get stuck in the habit of going for the closest tote to them when picking lines and spending time on a stubborn tote. I can see that happening a lot to teams that are keeping the starting pattern they only pickup totes in a certain order when in reality that order might not be the best. Breaking apart the totes should make those decisions on which tote to go to next much more clear.

Edit: Anybody got a better term then pickup lines in retrospect there has to be one...

Originally Posted by who716 (Post 1442278)

I think you maybe in for a surprise in this one I don't think the landfill is movable, good luck though

Originally Posted by mrnoble (Post 1442297)

Do you mean, difficult to move, or illegal to move?

Originally Posted by who716 (Post 1442298)

difficult wise, you have to look at how many totes are there, and the way they are packed in, and think about how many you have to actually move, it may not be the 3 or 4 you have in your shop, like a previous post said, it was going to be hard to move past the first row but I highly doubt the second.

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1442299)

You do realize there is a giant gap in the middle.

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1442299)

You do realize there is a giant gap in the middle.

Originally Posted by who716 (Post 1442298)

difficult wise, you have to look at how many totes are there, and the way they are packed in, and think about how many you have to actually move, it may not be the 3 or 4 you have in your shop, like a previous post said, it was going to be hard to move past the first row but I highly doubt the second.

Originally Posted by 346CADmen (Post 1442521)

Early on, but too late for our team to turn back, some of the crew came up with something different. An overhead trolley crane. Collapsible trolley system, think an ez-up shelter, that covers the entire field. With a cable traversing system running inside it.
I would love to see if any team attempts such a design.

Originally Posted by bEdhEd (Post 1442568)

Yesterday we figured out a passive system for our robot to help it move a majority of the landfill zone totes completely out of the way in two moves, so we can get to one, if not both containers on the step. I predict with practice, that we can do this under 10 seconds, and with some slave driving, maybe under 5. We will be doing more testing today with the robot powered so we can really get an idea of how fast we can clear the landfill zone. The proof of concept tests we did yesterday were very promising.