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Fueling Scoring Challenge
Last night during vigorous discussion of game play strategy at HBR we discovered what we believe to be a serious challenge with this year's game as related to typical FIRST strategy for repeatable goal alignment.
Because of the processing rate of the boiler (5 fuel per second) the maximum achievable pressure with teleop fuel scoring is 225 points of 675 fuel. In order to create a viable "cycle" this dictates that you have to exceed 5 fuel per second entering the boiler to maximize your scoring ability for fuel. At this point we believe something in the neighborhood of 15 fuel per second is needed to create an adequate processing time buffer to allow for transit, collection, and scoring of additional fuel. The logical jump when considering this is to use the key immediately in front of the boiler as an alignment tool to create a repeatable scoring situation. The problem with this strategy is what I'll outline below. As the distance traveled across the ground by the projectile decreases and apex height increases the ratio of vertical and horizontal velocity components becomes larger. Eventually this means that as projectiles reach apex and the vertical component of velocity is exhausted the total velocity of the projectile becomes quite small. As you consider a string of projectiles in this situation, convergence can be observed as projectiles move towards the apex. When projectiles actually converge in flight this creates very erratic behavior and has the potential to cause a significant number of missed shots. The mathematical model required to describe and evaluate this situation is not clear to us at this point and we're looking for some help. Maybe someone here has an idea? |
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Worth noting that if you miss, the balls roll back down on top of your robot if you were to be sitting with your bumper up against the boiler. So if you had a hopper with an open top, you could reload on your missed shots.
Because of that, I would say accuracy takes a back seat to speed/balls per second on this one. Up to you to decide what percentage of missed balls is acceptable. |
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If you're looking to launch 15 fuel per second, and keep the balls at least an inch apart from each other, the speed at the top of the arc must be at least 7.5 ft/s, if your shooting interval is quite regular. (That is, keep a 6 inch separation between ball centers.) If it's more of a random timing, you would need to go significantly faster. Perhaps if you had two launchers running in parallel...:yikes:
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Potential issue with this is that you're hogging the entire boiler if you're sitting right in front of it like this, but that might be OK if you're the ball specialist and you're teamed up with two gear specialists looking to get that RP. Or if other high-goal shooters are able to aim at the boiler from a distance so you're not in each other's way.
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GeeTwo's math makes sense. 15 balls x 6" center-to-center = 90"/s = 7.5 ft/s. And that's horizontal movement at the top of the arc. Let's try some back of the envelope experimenting with logic and a trajectory calculator:
I think good high rate of fire teams will have a 2-3 wide shooter at the back of the robot, optimized for shooting diagonally into the goal. EDIT: Also thinking about a single stream shooter, this means you're shoving balls through your feed system at 6.25 ft/s to acheive 15 balls/s. Which sounds pretty insane, honestly. 10 balls/sec with 3 streams makes for 1.4 ft/s, which seems somewhat more reasonable. |
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But regardless of how effective your shooter is, the problem remains that if you sit at the base of the boiler you're occupying that space. One of the (many) reasons our team decided to specialize in gears is the realization that a low-goal dumper or a basic high-goal shooter is likely going to want to sit right next to the boiler, which means there will be congestion and/or a line-up to get in there. |
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a> they get a possible faster firing rate b> they don't block dumpers |
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average of 4balls/s processed means the final 30s of the match can only process 120 balls. Anything in the boiler after that risks not being scored right?
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Calculate how long it'll take to go across the field, lineup on the loading station, retrieve the gear, run back across the field, line up on the lift and deposit that gear ... all while avoiding defense, spilled fuel and dropped gears. it's going to be an interesting year ;) |
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I've heard estimates of anywhere from 8 to 15 balls/s for a full boiler, but I don't have a source for those numbers. |
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Plus, scored fuel is replenished to the field. |
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