Gears on the floor?
 

I wonder how many gears we'll see on the carpet? Dropped while loading or trying to place on the axles? Or getting knocked out of bots by hard impacts?

Will they get in the way? Cause robots to get high-centered?

Is it worthwhile to build a device to pick gears off the floor? This could save a lot of time running back & fourth across the field, but the design would be a major challenge, considering the new robot envelopes rule.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

My own answers:

1) Double-digits per event.
2) Both.
3) Probably.
4) Only if they're at the chutes or right at the lifts, where they can jam against the wall.
5) Unlikely, given the bumper zone. But never say never.
6) Iron Kings labeled it Expert Mode on their priority list (something that we really want to pursue, but don't want to lock ourselves into if it severely compromises other functionality). I think others will make it happen too.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Same here. 3946 has this as a priority 2 item, which means about the same thing.

I expect dropped gears to be more common in quals than eliminations unless it's due to defense, e.g. "forced fumbles".

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Agreed with 1-5. 811 put a Prototype Team on it, and we think we have something that will work.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Honest question:
Why bother? There are 22 gears available to each team (not counting the presets) and 13 places to put them. If a gear is on the ground, why make a mechanism to manipulate it when there are nine teammate-controlled extras?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

It would be my advice for anyone interested to possibly look back to 2013 for a bit of quick inspiration for floor intake designs.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

We came to the conclusion that we don't need to pickup gears on the floor since there are plenty at the feeder station. You have 10 more gears than you need to get all 4 rotors going. (18 start + 3 preload + 1 in the airship = 22 gears) so even if you drop almost half of your available gears on the floor, you still have enough gears behind the wall to get your RP

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

The two questions I have for whether gears off the ground is a viable idea are:
A) How many gears do you imagine are going to be on the ground? and
B) Is your ground gear system faster than driving back to the load station?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

There are many ways of accomplishing the same task. If you can pick up off the floor, then you have the capabilities of grabbing your opponents dropped gears as well, instead of trying to traverse the field for them.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

The only reason I can think of is in case it falls in a really awkward area and you're having trouble pushing it away, but I'm not too sure how often that would happen (if at all).

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Because there may be a gear that isn't 50-60 feet away from me.

(Alternatively, because that might just be the fastest way to get control of one from the chute.)

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I think this is the most strategically important reason to be able to pick them up. If an opponent fumbles a gear at their chute (maybe because of well timed defense) then you can grab it and take it right to your own lift.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Unless the opponents tag you in their loading zone...

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I'm picturing the opponent tries for a gear, drops it. Grabs another, takes off for their lift. You swoop in, kick it out of their loading zone, push it along the floor and finish intaking it outside the zone.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Having an intake for floor gears is the only way to get a 120 point autonomous. That's maybe a decent reason to pursue it. Maybe.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Also, ground intakes may have a quicker cycle time depending on the driver. If there's a gear on the floor outside of the loading station, the robot does not need to line up correctly with the chute. Instead it can, like a ball, just drive up to the gear laying on the floor. The time efficiency would range depending on drivers, but when you need 12 gears any time saving will help.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Yes. Especially if there are many of them in one area.

Yes. I foresee a large number of robots with low ground clearance this year.

Yes. It is almost always worthwhile to have the option to pick up a game piece off the floor.

Maybe. With a little creativity I think that the size restrictions can be worked around without too much complexity. You are only saving time if the floor pickup you design is faster than your cycle times. Don't bother picking up off of the floor if it is going to take you half the match to do it.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I'm picturing lurking just out of sight behind the airship and swooping in to tag drivers who are preoccupied with the bait gear on the floor :)

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Gears on the floor could be an alliance strategy, where a great gear handler from the floor gets gears delivered to them by their partners. Of course, once they are on the ground, the opponents can play defense on them but they are harder to clear away than balls and they can only possess one at a time. Getting as many as possible to your side (even on the ground) and having a good pickup and placement mechanism would make it feasible for a single robot to place 12 gears if their partners were delivering them to the launchpad area.

I imagine you'd have 3 gears on robots and the reserve to start. At least one would be scored in auto and any left at the start of teleop would be dumped in the launchpad. Then all 3 robots would go for 3 more gears (and fuel). At that point, the gear handler would have 5 gears to place bringing the total to 7. Repeat this twice more (or 3x with 2 robots) and you'd be at 13.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Keep in mind a good gear floor pickup greatly decreases travel time to acquire a gear and you need 12 for RP. it takes a while with across field vision to even obtain a gear. Would be much better to scoop fallen ones closer up. Plus greatly eases load time no line up needed human just drops gear on floor robot gets.... I think floor pickup of gears is a must due to cycle times for top gear bots considering driver station views, distance, defense and the rest. bots that just have passive gear collection will struggle IMO

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

FRC Design rule #4 you must be able to pickup your primary scoring object off of the floor.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I think having an intake would be great and it'd be helpful for sure. No gears would be wasted! Hard part is picking the gears off the floor and having time to score points everywhere else... I feel like going around picking up dropped gears would take a lot of time if there were a decent amount of them falling throughout the match... maybe that's just me though... :yikes:

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

This is the real question.

Most of the designs I've seen so far on Twitter are a basically a funneled cup shape. Once the gear is in, it would take a pretty massive shakeup to drop it.

The two places where you're going to see dropped gears are at the receiving station, and at the lift. I'm not sure you'll see many dropped gears anywhere else.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

That's true. The amount's definitely important. Spend time making an intake and gears are rarely dropped on the floor... that wouldn't be good.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Decent floor pickup and your Human Player to drop gears on floor rather than robot having to line up and waste time , so there will be as many gears on the floor as you need you never have to waste time with a line up..its the way to go. Too many gears too little time. More engineering sure, worth it yes.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Better take back that division win from 1503 in 2011, and a good deal of division and championships wins from teams in 2006.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Plus more than half of Einstein 2013...

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I don't uderstand the love for picking up gears off the floor in this thread. Unless you have an amazing floor pickup picking up gears from the floor still takes time, maybe less than if you were loading from a loading station but time none the less. I wouldn't be surprised if a well practiced gear scorer was able to to go to the loading station, grab a gear and score it before an average robot could score one picked off the ground next to the airship.

In 2013 two of the world champions had intakes during regional play and removed them for championship even though they were necessary for a fairly common high scoring auton. It's not like ground intakes were undervalued that year either considering there were ultra competitive teams who only had the option of picking up from the ground (2056 notably)

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

2450 did some CAD modeling to pick up the gear. I wish the gear had a large chamfer to get a "dustpan" under it while laying flat. Fairly sharp corner on carpet that probably cant be scooped up.

Ideas welcomed.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I think you might be underestimating Vision and defense..... going to exact same spot is of course a tendency and you can be if you are very effective at gear collection that tendency will be used against you and slow you down a lot when you need 6...at least with floor the pickup point will be different and you could have several gears laying on floor pretty sure you can chuck the gears out at a high rate forcing them away from the retrieval area and being more unpredictable in picking them up

Only downside (with scoops) I see to floor pickup is trying to no get messed up with balls which will be prevalent

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I think a 3-4 finger claw mechanism that grabs and then puts in position to score might be good and not too hard, sensor for contact...detect , drop , contract fingers ,hold, raise , place , expand fingers, score look at garbage picker uppers for inspiration.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Similar issues were prevalent in 2013. Who's going to be dropping all this gears anyway? It's not like they are being shot into the air. More than likely they will get stuck into the corners of the air ship surrounded by balls that missed the boiler. Sounds like a pain to pick up to me. I mean sure it's doable and if your team can pull it off that's great but is it really a good use of time?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

18 gears to floor simple by your HP you can dump balls anytime same for gears

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/portal.php?
I dont think that there is going to be many gears just lying around on the floor and it would be a waste of time to build a collector.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Newer team wishes to know more about FRC Design Rule #4. I haven't come across any FRC Design Rules. Where can I find this reference, please? Your rule #4 makes sense and am wondering about the golden nuggets in the other rules.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I would say it's one of Karthik's rules, not an FRC rule per se. I don't have a link to Simbot Strategy right now, though... If you get a chance, watch the presentation.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I just wanted to share my disappointment after noticing how nicely the gears roll and then coming to the rule disallowing a mechanism to roll gears from across the field. The GDC has made me so cynical that whenever I imagine a winning robot I quickly think, "the GDC likely outlawed it" and usually I'm right, unfortunately. :(

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Remember 1114's awesome floor pickup in 2013? But seriously, I'm more worried about getting called for herding when there's a stupid gear in the way.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Because reasons.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Made a wood chassis and a wood apparatus. We can pick gears up off the floor! Prototype human motions are simple 90 degree "door" rotation and a peg that slides forward and back.

Geometry figured so the same apparatus delivers the gear to the spring peg.

With some more work we can add a chute to get a gear from the human at the wall.

2450

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

It's not even particularly good advice. Sometimes you don't need floor pickup of the primary scoring piece. The example cited by others in this thread is 1503's 2011 robot (In this video they are the red robot closest to the camera at the start of autonomous). Note how they made a simple and elegant mechanism and are able to cycle quickly and effectively. I would say they were a better robot than 99% of other teams. Floor acquisition and delivery to a scoring mechanism is a perennially difficult challenge that can be sidestepped by using the predictably placed hoppers/chutes/etc there are on the field. Of course, it's always better to have than not have, but in the context of the monetary, time, and complexity budgets nixing it is something that is certainly worth considering. Two weeks of driver practice, a working autonomous and fewer bugs is worth more than floor pickup to most teams.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

We actually had luck with putting the intake roller on the bottom (with the polycarb sheet above) rather than on top or outwards. Just make sure the tread or whatever you line your roller with is extra grippy and the roller doesnt have a massive diameter(ours were about 1"). Although, as far as tread is concerned, I think wedgetop worked fine for us....

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

We put the gear on a flat surface, and saw a very tiny space between the gear teeth and the ground. So while the gear doesn't have a large chamfer, it may have a small one. Using a very thin pan worked for us, but sometimes it does get jammed so alternatives are welcome.
How do the gears go in then? Is the whole thing tilted downwards?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Yes. Our intake was at an angle downwards, and the roller propelled it up the slope of the intake. With polycord strung across more rollers, I would imagine it would have continued to be guided up the slope

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I would suspect that it's just faster to let the HP drop the gear on the floor for you. I think we won't be doing gear pickup, but if we were, i'd only get from the floor, and I'd do the picking up while already driving back to the airship.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

This is my concern. Especially since it's looking like a lot of bumpers are going to be mounted super low this year.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

You want a solo 120 point auton? Not only is there another way, it's far easier.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Plus even if you wanted to accomplish it with gears, there's at least one previous Einstein robot that loves to ruin the "you can't do that unless you design for floor pickup" argument, including having successfully run non-preloaded autonomous routines (two ubertubes in 2011 by 1503).

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

There is a LOT of conjecture in this thread, and no one has provided photos or other evidence from experiments at the human feeder station. I won't provide ours, but rather, encourage teams to do MANY of their own with every game piece that can come out of the station. 2013 "kind of" applies, but there was only 1 type of game piece so it was easy to prevent. Same with 2015, unless your human players made huge mistakes.

Also, like usual, the team field drawings are missing a critical component that mimics the real field: the wall goes straight down from the feeder station. There is no recess. This is important for your experiments.

There will be a lot of miscommunication between a drive team and the human player that is 50 feet away, behind 1-2 airships, and also has 2 panes of semi-reflective plexiglass between them. Gears will fall on the ground.

If you want to be an all-around bot that mimics the Ri3D teams' gear intakes, then don't do the experiments and don't worry about gears on the ground. It is likely the (apparently exceedingly rare) great gear bots will form an alliance without you.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

That's true, but that's pretty well solved with a camera and driver practice.

The gear active intake as a whole really comes down to an individual team's strategy. Having an active gear intake + having a decent shooter/hopper system/climber with a potential ball intake on that makes the space allowable within the volume limits difficult. A Ri3D style gear intake is smaller than most active gear intakes and allows much more space on the robot if a team's plans are to do multiple objects.

Just things to think about when planning your own team's strategy.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

What do you mean? Can you achieve that without a pick up system?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Camera will be effectively used on ~10% of robots. Drive practice, maybe 20%.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

2017 has had a weird start for me, so maybe I'm just seeing things differently. This year, above all other years, is not the year to do both primary scoring objectives for 99% of teams.

I can't understand why any team would risk not getting bonuses, or why they would presume that its ever a guarantee an average alliance of 3 gear bots can pull it off. Conditions on the field will be chaotic by mid-match.

Sure, active intake from the ground is optional. But the Ri3D intakes from the feeder are grossly inadequate for all but the earliest levels of play.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

One way I can think of is to find a way for partners to dump their gear into your very-forgiving non-ground pickup. Yet it would take getting your partners to play along with both a simple dumping mechanism and custom autonomous code.

Maybe there are more ways to do it. In any event it's a bit of inter-robot complexity for a net gain of 20 points.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

1 gear plus 60 fuel = 120 points and doesn't count on picking up two gears (one at a time) and delivering them with enough time for the pilot to do their job.

There might be five teams in the world that can accomplish this, but by my estimate that's about 5.03 times as many teams as can accomplish a 3-gear auton.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

In that case why wouldn't you just have both the robots just place a gear on the lift themselves? 65 points X 2. Theoretically all three robots could do it.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Multiple robots placing a gear on the peg in auton isn't easy. For dead reckoning, there is approximately +/- 0.75" of margin of error left/right after a robot drives. One team only has to drive 4 feet. The other two teams have to drive approximately 6-8 feet and also possibly turn.

You may say 'just use vision', but it is rarely that simple.

I predict that multiple gears in auton will be as rare as any tower-scoring autons were in 2016. In some regions of the country it will be more common than others - but compared to 2014 and prior autonomous routines it will be very rare.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Yeah, I agree, but I think that would be far more likely than the "I'll place one gear and then you pass me another one and I'll place that one too" scenario that was described above.

It is a fun and clever thought experiment: set up your robot such that in auto it situates itself on the field adjacent to the airship and presents a peg to another robot that thinks it is placing its gear on the center peg.

The more productive goal will likely be: place the gear, run to a hopper, dump it, shoot high goals until time runs out.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I get it. Was just thinking about how a team could 'solo' 120 auto gear points though. The peg->hopper->vomit-balls-and-pray route seems a little far-fetched because of how long the actions could take (including time of flight - you can't just line-drive into the high goal like prior years). If there were 1 partner that could place on a side lift, and a team had a method to sense gears on the ground, then a 2-bot/3-gear auton seems more plausible.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Here's my opinion on floor pickup for gears: At many events, there is going to be sub-par gear robots that are going to drop gears. Depending on how much this happens, you could easily loose a match to not being able to pick up dropped gears. If you are a robot focusing on gears, it's a safe assumption that you are trying to be one of the best gear robots at the event and probably want to seed high. To do this, you are going to need a floor intake to make sure you can score a consistent amount of gears and not rely on alliance partners if they malfunction or just can't handle the gears reliably.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Many robots will only be capable of intaking from the floor. I don't see a drastic reason why not. I guess it's a little awkward near the retrieval zone, but I think it could do.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

With floor pickup you save time...no need to line up at retrival station

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Yes, provided your floor pickup is "touch it, own it".

There will be a number of floor pickups that will work slowly or require enough precision that it will essentially be no different than human loading, but determined teams who really work out the details of a good concept will have a much easier time.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

You still have to line up with the gear. Once the gear falls out of the loading station it becomes an unknown entity. It could roll into the airship and get stuck in a corner or your alliance partner could drive over it while waiting for fuel. The loading station is consistent and easier to practice for. With the new rules minimizing frame extensions it's much easier to build for too. There are countless examples of loading station only robots that were Einstein competitive even when game pieces were far more abundant and distributed throughout the field.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

You want to be able to pick up gears from the floor, because the gear will move side to side in the chute, and if you are near your airship and a defensive robot hits you and forces you to drop the gear you have to go all the way across the field again and back for 1 gear.

A good gear robot will only be scoring 4-6 gears a match, dropping just one gear a match is a huge deal ground intake or not. If your dropping so many gears that you need a ground intake just to pick them up again then maybe you should consider re-examining your priorities.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I'd say 7 a match is the target for "Top good gear" bot, pretty uncertain how many of these so-called good gear bots will exist. So many variables, sight and defense plus messy floor. Not like past games many other factors including Human ones.

Seems to me defense versus good gear bot would be pretty easy for many bots to do effectively, at either end as both require contact and certain precision not to mention travel time and knowing the scoring targets exactly a peg. Going to be interesting I think it'll be rare indeed to see 7 gears placed by any single bot more like 4 max per bot with average gear bots doing 2. At least in weeks 1-3.

I expect allinces early to try to limit other alliance scoring more than scoring themselves, try to win with "no defense safe times " using auto and climbing as the point earning mainly,later scoring will come into play as teams figure it out.

its an intersting game strategy wise with all the variables.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I think that a lone gear blocking access to a lift may prevent scoring on that lift. Robots with a gear loaded will not be allowed to move/bulldoze (G27) the blocking gear. If there are no active gear manipulators, that lift could be difficult to access. Especially if a non-gear-laden robot fails to clear the gear by bulldozing.

Would littering the opponent lifts with blocking gears be a potential defensive move?

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

G21. GAME PIECES: use as directed. ROBOTS may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g. GEARS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements, e.g. BOILERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

I believe as long as its not amplifying or easing a challenge to be ok.

G21. GAME PIECES: use as directed. ROBOTS may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g.
GEARS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements,
e.g. BOILERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.
Violation: YELLOW CARD

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Yeah... a single lift intentionally blocked by a gear or gears might be allowed.

I think it is more likely that gears will be accidentally dropped in front of lifts while attempting to place them. This may be enough of a reason to have a floor collector for gears.

Kudos to the GDC. It's difficult to predict how this game will actually play out.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

We may be faced with bulldozing gears out of our way, if dropped right at the post ....or by the loaders and hoppers. Some analysis of the geometry and dimensions will help us better understand the hazards and how it relates to bot design and clearances. See pic of a gear on the carpet - under a gear on post: https://www.dropbox.com/s/elh7edsx0e...rence.JPG?dl=0

But be careful...G21. GAME PIECES: use as directed. ROBOTS may not deliberately use GAME PIECES, e.g. GEARS, in an attempt to ease or amplify the challenge associated with other FIELD elements, e.g. BOILERS, HOPPERS, or ROPES.

Re: Gears on the floor?
 

Lookin' like a fool with your gears on the floor!