Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

This is the real question for this thread, IMHO. What is the robot longevity during these 120 plus match marathons for a robot designed to play 2:10 short (often agressive/defensive) minutes at a time.

How many of these great teams took their "originally designed/fabricated structures" from stop build; to first match to test the length of the season (off-season events)..?

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

It'd also be really interesting to see how the performance of some robots changed as they got more and more beaten up. In my team's experience, There's sometimes a noticeable change by the time off-seasons come around. (I'm just glad there's not much video of MARC 2014.) Our longest season was this year, at ~79 matches. Only midwest (excluding Michigan) team I can find that had more was 2826, with 84. (Perhaps 1730 had more, depending on what offseasons they went to) I could be off a little bit, as I don't quite remember how many qualification matches there were at R2OC this year.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

I believe I have told this one before on CD (and I have bored many in person), but I think it is a good story relative to this thread.

In 2007, for 33, we designed super light due to all the structure. Estimated the cycle count for the arm as about 10 cycles per match time 20 matches per event times 5 events (3 regionals, Worlds, and IRI) or about 1,000 cycles. For aluminum, this is designing just a bit past yield, but not too terrible much. Operation wise, this would be 2 minutes x 100 matches or about 3-4 hours of match play (180-240 minutes). We built a practice bot with similar structure. This bot self-destructed after about 10 hours of practice. It was structural fatigue of some of the main arm elements. Absolutely catastrophic.
Because of this, we made some fix-it parts during one of the fix it windows in case such a failure occurred at Worlds.
End of the day, the robot made it all the way through regular season*, IRI, Kettering Kick-off and then was on display at the YES expo doing match after match until it too self destructed.

When we tallied it up, (TBA shows 68 matches), but the robot likely saw close to those 100 matches, or about 3.5 hours of match play. Plus a few hours of practice/test/tune cycling plus about 1/2 day of playing with at YES expo (probably another 3 hours of operation/cycling). IE it also failed at about 10 hours of operation.

Once switching to districts, the match count just about doubles, and the potential for practice hours can be quite high with unbag time. Basically, you can't play with the fatigue limits nearly as much as you "yusta-could".



*We did fatigue one piece a couple times during season where the claw connected with the wrist. the issue with that piece was it had a lot of welding which lost the temper of the Aluminum, and it would yield when the arm would occasionally whack itself on the ground. We had a failure right before alliance selection at Detroit that year, and it had to be replaced.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

The degeneration is real. At New England District Championships in 2014, 195 was performing at its peak during quals. Once elims came around (somewhere around match 80-85 of the season), anything that could've gone wrong on the robot, did go wrong. Some of the problems still weren't solved by the end of Worlds. A lot of the moving parts were completely replaced for off-season, but the robot never performed the same again.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

This is a very important part of scouting, especially at events like a District Championship or Worlds. A robot could have done great all season long, but halfway through a third or fourth competition, the continuous wear and tear shows. I have noticed this multiple times in the past two years, even more so with Aerial Assist.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

We ran 140 matches this year.

(Suffield,Waterbury,RI,Hartford,NEDCMP,Galileo,CT Champs, BattlecryWPI, WIWI, Bash at the Beach)
plus we run it hard on asphalt for hours at a time at summer and fall events (6 events) plus a bunch of short demos.

This year wear and tear wise we had started having issues at NEDCMP quals (match 70 or so) until we discovered and fixed a bent piece that aligned the totes in the stack -small issue with a big effect - otherwise the wear and tear was nothing compared to 2014 after 110 matches.

A measure of difference between years, this year we still have the original KOP wheels on from the beginning - in 2014 we needed to change them out every competition - with essentially same(or equivalent) drive-train.

Many teams have practice robots - does anyone have a conscious plan of a fleet leader - having their practice robot run more matches(simulated) than the gamer to ferret out wear and tear issues?

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

Or build test platforms for subsystems that seem to be more prone to wear/tear than others.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

We ran 140 matches this year.

(Suffield,Waterbury,RI,Hartford,NEDCMP,Galileo,CT Champs, BattlecryWPI, WIWI, Bash at the Beach)
plus we run it hard on asphalt for hours at a time at summer and fall events (6 events) plus a bunch of short demos.

This year wear and tear wise we had started having issues at NEDCMP quals (match 70 or so) until we discovered and fixed a bent piece that aligned the totes in the stack -small issue with a big effect - otherwise the wear and tear was nothing compared to 2014 after 110 matches.

A measure of difference between years, this year we still have the original KOP wheels on from the beginning - in 2014 we needed to change them out every competition - with essentially same(or equivalent) drive-train.

Many teams have practice robots - does anyone have a conscious plan of a fleet leader - having their practice robot run more matches(simulated) than the gamer to ferret out wear and tear issues?

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

Yes we do this, I think most teams with practice bots do this. its great to get this info while practicing. Prior to the 2015 San Diego regional, we had about 200 practice matches over 2 weeks. We almost always use the match timer to keep the batteries in good condition. We caught an issue with our RC carriage wearing out its bearing mounts and were able to implement a solution for our comp bot. It also gave use info on the life cycle of our intake wheels, and the stacker disk brake.

I think our comp bot had about 90 matches this year for comparison.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

If this is about a robot - it should not count practice robot matches.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

Practice matches need to be considered too, actually. See "fatigue life"--fatigue doesn't care if the cycles the material has gone through are in quals, elims, shop testing, or practice matches. What it cares about is, "I've gone through X,000 cycles, I'm about to *OUCH!* break." (Or has gone through some extra stress, but that's another topic.)

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

Also, with practice matches, robots are often pushed even harder than they would be in, for example, a qualification match. Teams want to see just how much their bot can handle and if certain strategies (especially "risk" strategies) have potential in an actual match or if the robot/driver skill does not present that strategy as a viable option.

Of course in these matches a team isn't going to push their robot to a breaking point. But, as an example, oftentimes this year a robot would carry more totes at one time to find an optimal cycle time strategy.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

469 does the same; I definitely concur/encourage teams who have a practice bot to practice with the match timer set in the driver station application. In 2012, we caught the screw shearing problem in the Supershifters early in the season. We had a fix practiced and in place, but the competition bot shifters never failed until the offseason. Nearly every year, we knew where the "problem" areas of the robot were and what parts to make many spares of/practice fixing.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

For 234, or matches are as followed for 2015:

Week 1- 12 quals and 2 elims
Week 3- 12 quals and 7 elims
Week 4- 12 quals and 8 elims
Week 6- 14 quals and 7 elims
Archimedes- 10 quals and 5 elims
CORI- 4 quals and 7 elims
IRI- 9 quals
Indy RAGE- at least 5 quals and 7 elims (We were finalists and I'm not sure how many qualification matches were at that event)
CAGE Match- 7 quals and 7 elims

Total: 135 matches +- 3 (Not sure 100% on Indy RAGE)

The wear and tear was 100% noticeable. By the time we made it to Archimedes, it was probably at it's prime. Started to degrade as we went into IRI for sure. The robot basically fell apart as we went into Indy RAGE. Our arms attached using bolts in order to fit into transport configuration. A hole in which a bolt goes through to attach the arms got so loose that the arm would flex so match that after a certain height, the stack would just fall over and out. Unfortunately, that resulted in some bad results at Indy Rage, but we were able to fix the robot for CAGE Match. That's just one example of how intense the wear on a robot is after that many matches.

Re: Most matches for a robot?
 

We could tell the wear and tear was getting to that robot in Archimedes - in fact, we could HEAR it. It seemed like a few of your quals matches were suffering because of it.

According to TBA, 118 played in 122 matches by the end of TRR - not sure if they have done any other events in the preseason this fall.