Knocking Down The Whole Stack...
 

Just out of curiosity, how many teams out there, that have competed already, have been able to knock down the entire stack in autonomous mode?? We (312) did it twice at the UCF Regional, one in match 12 (http://www.soap108.com/2003/movies/fl/ fl_012) and the other in QF 2.1... have any other teams done this??

Well, being at the UCF regional, you guys shoulda known Swamp Thing succeeded in that...But I didn't really watch many of the matches, most of the time I was working on the bot and such, only watched theirs cause they are some of my cool friends, but congrats on getting it done twice ^^

Oh they did?! I didn't know that... I was in the pits or running around most of the time... I really didn't get to see any of the matches either... wow that's cool... I wonder if any other regionals did that tho... or is UCF just got the best bots ;)

Yea, We set so many records there didn't we? Yea, most of the time I as doing running. I was usually in another teams pit, haha. I helped University most of the time, I sorta turned into their mentor. So ya, I didn't see many of your all's maches, but I saw ya all outside, very good. Though your team was a little cocky talking me ::hides:: They were liek "WE mad it up the ramp in 2 seconds flat......" Then someone yelled at him for lying to me....o.O I dont think anyoe succeeded in doing it other than you all and Swamp Thing, from the reactions when Swamp Thing did it, dead sience then all cheering.

I'm sure it's happend
 

I'm sure it has happened and will happen at more regionals. I don't think it was just Heat Wave or Swamp Thing, though I didn't personally see them do it at UCF, another team with a big arm swiped them all down on Friday in autonomous. That was pretty cool :) . Somebody had once said that since we were the first to start off the reginoal competitions at KFC everybody already knew what to do after watching our mistakes. I guess we always had great robots, we just didn't have that advantage of watching competitions to know what to do before we did it.

Wild Stang's robot is VERY similar to swamp thing and they've been known to put out GREAT robots every year so it's likely they'll be able to do it the same deal. I always see them in the finals at nationals so it's possible. Theres still a bunch of regionals left right? How about all the delphi teams or beatie the beast. I don't THINK I've seen them play yet.

Yeah and Heat Wave has been known to be a cocky bunch. I remember in 98 when they seemed to be nice. After that .......... They have a pretty sweet drive system though. They've used the exact one for 6 years now but it's light weight and pretty strong so that's probably one of the reasons to their success. I even wonder if they're prebuilt them that they're so similar. :/ ehh. never know

LOL, even though I'm on the team I'd admit that we are cocky... even I am cocky... we've got this whole mentality that we're the best and all that... especially this year we have (had?) that... when we were practicing at Baxter (our sponsor) we did atleast 50 runs in a row where we knocked down the entire stack but then we get to competition and things start breaking... I think we just were running our robot so many times that parts were getting old and need to be replaced... for the majority of UCF we didn't have a low gear... that's pretty terrible especially when you try and turn or push... but yea, we're cocky... but in a nice way... after we win we don't go to the teams that lost and go, "YOU SUCK!!" or anything... although somebody from one of the winning teams did that to PAW... :rolleyes: pretty mean... but yea... we just get "caught in the momment" so to say and it's all "team spirit" ;) We mean no harm and we love tons of teams out there!!

Someone said that to us? interesting, mustve missed that. Yeah, if your brake hadnt broken in the semi's who knows what wouldve happened in that match, are you guys going to nat's? we have to hope for an opening and get off the wait list.

Haha, yea, some of your team did have the ego, but with me, I think it was a little more apparent, maybe them just trying to show off for a girl type of thing. I dunno. We seemed to push you and your partner pretty well up and down the ramp, was thaqt with or without your high gear, cause you guys sorta gave us the "Gasp" face from across the field. A lot of people have told me that you guys weren't so bad in the past.


Well, I think it was the semi's, not to sure, but one of ya all's team mates was recording a match on his tippy toes, and I walked over to him and wa sliek "I think you are too short to be doign that" and he sorta looked over at me and laughed, so some of them were pretty nice and such, some of you...haha.

Our team is a very random match up of ppl. If you paid attention to the awards ceremony you found out that 108 is composed of rival schools (dillard and taravella) although they arent that big of rivals, well, my team is composed of Westminster Academy and Pine Crest, and for those of you not from south FLA you might not understand but we are both private schools that hate each other in everything else imaginable but robotics, some WA ppl even cut down a very expensive tree of ours a couple years ago and ever since there has been a trading off of spray paint. What match was the *gasp* face? b/c our drive train only failed us once, in match #101 (great timing right?) and it was one of our two front wheels that we steer with that fell off, but our driver made it up the ramp miraculously, it was sweet.

Hehehe that was me! :p And my above reply was my own and not representing my team so please don't associate it like that... and yes everybody has an ego, if you don't have an ego then the game isn't fun! ;)

the only team with an over-the-wall arm was team 147, who is from our rival school Boga ciega (sp?). Also team 79, with their insane drive train, is from Pinellas county to (I think they are east lake high).

I saw the match where swamp thing made it up the ramp (can't rememmber if it was in auto, but I assume it was) and I personally think it was a pretty awesome sight. If team 111 can do that consistantly and quickly I will be in awe (either way I'll probably be hangin' around their pits).

I guess we'll see In two weeks (aaaahhhh, tooo looooong!!) If we really are the fastest.

[edit] also aces high (945?) got up the ramp pretty quickly and reaked havoc with their rotating arm [/edit]

swamp thing was in auto mode, they happend to lose the match however thanks to some quick thinking by the two rookie teams they were against (they were with 180 (SPAM)), if you knock down all the boxes you have to end up on top of the ramp to win, b/c all those boxes get in ur way and ur nme manages to clear them all out of your endzone somehow (havent decided how yet, but good job RACE and Flahsbacks for doing it to us)

Aces High - 176

thanks, guy.

Opps, hee hee, well, see, least you had a better attitude than most of your team, your drive was kinda harsh to a lot of people form what I saw, no offence to him...but yea, you didn't seem THAT egotistical. I dunno, that one time I did talk to your team, sorta veared me away from them till the finals, cept one poor teammate of yours who sat int he bleechers by me...poor him. Nah, you don't have to have a ego to have fun, I don't have an ego...but then again, I am a girl, so I can talk to a lot more people easier than the reast of my team, haha

Here's that match of Swampthing and Spam

It was a fun match. After we started losing our matches we just tried to have fun with it (not that we didn't try). But the design we ended up with really wasn't meant for a lot of action. This was a match we should have parked on the ramp and maintained a block. But we agreed with Spam earlier to open up the bottom and let them through to try and protect our human stack. But they got hung up on our wheelie bar and the stack ended up knocked over. As we were carrying the bot off the field I heard all the refs saying that was the play of the day. It was a trip, we drove on top of both opponents and everyone else drove on top of us... heh. We had a few good moments but for the most part our design was intended to flip over the wall and be there first. Heatwave did an excellent job of that! But our contingency deployment didn't quite work out to well. But hey it was fun. I think it's clear that if you wanna play the game we wanted - you had to be there first.

I guess nobody watched the last two weeks worth of regionals.

NASA/VCU - Team 343 (Metal in Motion) had one of the better auton modes and could pretty consistently take down the central stack. They weren' t the fastest, but their design was not to let any bins fall behind them.
Mention must be made of team 234, who did not get the entire stack, but their stationary arm swing consistently got 2/3 of the bins before anyone else reached the ramp.

Chesapeake - MOE (team 365) had an auton mode that could get to the top and take all the bins (thanks to the fiberglass rods sticking out in all directions), but their auton was not as repeatable.
Delphi Demons (team 858) consistently got all the bins in auton mode as well, thanks to the wide-winged KOH design.

... and that is just the two regionals that I attended. I am sure that there are more.

Final note... Yes, 312, that was an impressive auton mode, very fast, repeatable and you got the bins. I hope Sparky gets a chance to go head2head with you. We are not as quick, but we might get there in time to push you back over the ramp. I will say you are quicker and more effective than any of the other teams I have seen live or otherwise.

Go Sparky!

Well anyone that went to the Pittsburg regional saw us do it! (Team #5) And for being as small as we where, we did pack a nice punch. (total of 14" high) :D

team 60 can
 

i was at the phoniex regional and team 60 has about a 12 foot wingspan about 6 feet tall that knocks down all the boxes in autonomous. they were having troubles missing the ramp because people were putting boxes in front of them but one of the members was explaining about a new wheel that will solve the problem for there next regional in L.A. It is really impressive to watch happen the 5-6 times they did it succesfully

I saw team 358 do it once at LI. They do not have a tremendous wingspan, and so use several "shots" to knock down the stack. To make it even more amazing, the opposing robot came under the bar at full speed and rammed into them in the middle of the autonomous mode, at yet the whole stack was on 358's side by the end of autonomous mode.

At the St.Louis regional team 547 got the entire stack atleast half a dozen times, and when it didn't get the entire thing they only missed a stack of 3....I've watched ever webcast so far and 547 has the best automode hands down.

Do you know if there are any videos of that team out there? Do the boxes fall back or all to one side? And how do they do it?

Ummm...I might have some video, let me check, I'll pm you if i do, but don't count on it.

They run up the hill and drop two flimsy looking arms(spring set so they wont break) and they hit the bottom stacks and push every single box on their side, hardly ever would a stray box fall back on them.

Re: Knocking Down The Whole Stack...
 

we do it everytime...as long as we dont get hit by another robot or anything (though once we did even though we got hit...)

Definately an AWESOME match. The whole wall, seeing it fall down from the top was pretty cool. That match was GREAT and in my opinion one of the best ones there.

SWAMPTHING
 

Hay The ten foot wide swampthing knocked them all down and then spam got on top of us to attempt the king of the hill

Re: Knocking Down The Whole Stack...
 

We almost got all of them down in one shot, i think we got 6.

but team 358 got their autonomous to knock all of them down in auto numerous times.


bad

Well, almost all of them dosen't count

HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
 

Need i say More?

rockin'
 

we can get all but 2 of the stacks, which could be a 3 and a 4 or 2 stacks of 3, depending on our position

That match with swamp thing was problally the most exciting thing i've ever seen, i think it beats out last years match vs. the Beast (71, 2nd match for championship, where we ended up preventing 71 from getting to the goals) as the most exciting. I had this strange feeling both us and swampthing would be on the top of the ramp but i never thought that we would climb on top of them. And then those rookie teams they suprised me that they could knock swampthing just enough to get on and knock us off.

hmmm...i cant find our video of autonomous mode :o

heres one of us knocking down the stack in what looks like player driving...(BAE Systems Regional btw)

ill try to get one of our autonomous mode up...

If he dim-wittingly mistaked you for a team member of swampthing, then it was probably me.

Re: HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
 

Please don't take this as an insult to your team, it is not intended to be so.

I do think you "need to say more".. if the standings on usfirst.org are right, you guys finished dead last (I didn't expect that low). Just because you can take out all the stacks uncontested doesn't mean much. (Uncontested in that only your autonomous ran [visible in picture that the other 3 are still in start position])
Being able to hit all the stacks first when contested is a lot more important.


Also, the stack fell 13 seconds into auto time. Most teams with working auto code get there in under 5-10 seconds.

Sorry Tytus, it's a good idea you guys have, implemented correctly, but it doesn't seem as effective as you proclaim it to be.

$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#$@# Gadget!!!
 

As usuial you have to go, and spoil my fun

the reason we came in last is because our scores were always so low That and no one hade The CHALUPAS!! to pick us as their aliance partner

O.o I dunno, I think someone did later, asked me what happened to flipping over the ramp, but that wasn't Heat Wave I don't think. He was just sitting in the bleechers, and I was like "Ew, don't sit by me, your team is conceited" And that was about the end of it. ::Shrugs:: EVERYONE mistaked me for being on Swamp Thing, lol, I just hung out with them a lot, along with other teams, like poor Bosch, who had to put up with me after the comp. I ended up looking at their awards and they kept asking me what award I won...*.*

Agreed, we expected to score low. We never really got to try our game plan because we had to work out our Autonomous code. That match was the last run on our left side, which will do it every time. The right we worked out after our last match. So now it will hit the stack every time (as long as there's no major hindrance). But it took 3 days to work out the bugs. It'll be fun to see it a Nats run up the center of the ramp. Granted it's slow but it'll do better. We switched up our strategies after all that too. The thing is, we managed to keep "everyone" from scoring while we were on the field. Which can be a great thing to have as your second match in finals if you won your first and just need a win or a low scoring loss. But I think now that it's going to run more consistently to the stacks, people will appreciate it a little more as a seeding partner. It's just not going to score high in qp's though since we can't share the ramp. As I said before, it's always been a low scoring win concept. But the intent was for it to jump the wall and have more of an advantage. I think the fact that we got it to still hit the stack in autonomous says we did a heck of a job with plan B. It wasn't easy for the team to take those losses easy. So I give them a lot of credit for wanting to keep going, even though we know whats ahead at Nationals. We took a big risk with our design, and I'll tell ya. Maybe it didn't pay off in points. But all the other teams gave us a lot of Praise and Kudos for what we had. I'm really thankful for that. With high risk can come great reward or just an interesting ride! I'm glad they were willing to take the risk, I think it's been a more valuable ride, had we just made a box bot (which BTW I'll post a pic of our original design, I think it would have done awesome knowing what I know now).

Our original design top view
Original design bottom

And just for mention, here's our Autonomous when it worked before we shipped (We changed the hinge for weight and somehow lost Autonomous):
Autonomous

And here's the Helicopter

lol, yup that was me, and yup that describes some of our team members (i.e. freshies and other noobs)

At the time I mis-heard you and thought that you had said "...your team succeeded..." and needless to say I found the remark a li'l confusing.

Anyways, nice to make you acqaintence Ms. Chan.
::attempts to shake hands with computer moniter::

::laughs horribly:: Awesome! Yea, most of your team isn't to bad on a individual basis, but other than that, no, I don't think they can be. Your driver was pretty bad too (no offence to him) Though I think it might of been him yelling at someone on your team for lying to me about your speed, I can't remember. Well anyways, I hope you guys get your gear shifting working.

547 Knocks 'em all down
 

For those that were not in St. Louis, here is a peek at 547.

We are not the fastest to the top, but when we arrive, the whole wall goes over. Based on what others are doing, we will increase our speed at nationals.

Some have said our arms are weak. True and this was our design to have spares as needed.

Bird or Prey maintains all four wheels on the surface at any angle of attack on the ramp.

Our video (235 Kb): http://personal.vallnet.com/mrozar/g.../547_wall3.wmv

Our pic:

Nationals here we come....
Mike Rozar