pic: Capping 177
 

Re: Capping 177
 

Not to knock 358 for their brilliant strategy, it took some big balls to pull off (just one really :p ) but I feel it should be noted for all scouts who may see the picture that 177 continued to herd balls and narrowly win the match

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Oooohhhhh...

Big arm. :)

How'd they do during the rest of the competition?

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

How'd who do? Us or them?

We went on to win the regional, they however continued to play an excellent game into the elimination rounds where I believe they made it to the semi-finals. However, I could be wrong on that.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Congrats. :)

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Thank you. It was an amazing day, let me tell you that.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Hey Evan, you obviously had a reliable ball delivery system for your net. Can you give me some detail on the working of it?

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Im not evan, but can answer the question just as well... at the front of the robot we have a knurrled roller thats about 12 inches off the ground, it runs the full width of the robot (about 2.5 balls worth)... The roller is run by a globe motor that has had one set of planetary gears taken out to give us the speed and power that we wanted. The motor is actually anchored inside of the roller so it gives us a direct drive with no loss of power, but at the same time doesnt take up much additional space. In the hopper itself there is a conveyor made of polycord which is run by a geared vandoor motor to keep the balls from jamming... This system results in excellent performance picking up and delivering the balls

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Our team also had a hopper. The hopper itself worked great and we caught 16 or 17 balls every time, but our delivery of them didn't account for the small lip inside the ball corral, and we lost many of the balls. :(

Oh, well. Glad yours worked for you. :)

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Thank you very much for your response. Know I've just got to figure a way to apply a similar system to our robot...

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I don't mean to be the Devil's advocate here, but don't expect to get it right your first time. I will say that 177 has tried several times to do small balls, and it took forever to finally get a system that works. A lot of it is just trying and trying till you get it to work. I'm sure you'll get it eventually.

Also, it's minor, but the polycord conveyer on our bot is actually powered by a van door motor while the basket is currently opened by a geared window motor. This may change and we may be opening the basket with vacuum because its much more forgiving.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I love seeing pics like these lol! I definitely want to try to see if we can do that in atlanta... it just looks so funny to me to see one robot capping another!! :p

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Oh i understand entirely. We have a ball hopper too, and our only proble has always been the delivery of the balls. We played with it all through our regional comp, with limited sucess. Hopefully that will change for nationals. Thanks for your help.

P.S. I dont want to be intrusive, but do you have pics of the system you have?

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

It's not intrusive. If I had pics, I'd get them for you, but alas, I couldn't find any on my computer. However, feel completely free to stop by our pit at the nationals. I'm sure anyone in our pit would be more than willing to show you all the components of our bot. Depending on who you talk to, you might just get the whole talk, from the unique and innovative vacuum to the rollers. ;D

You'll figure out the important factors in delivering the balls. I'm sure you're doing it, but you should work on developing some ideas for systems now before Atlanta so you can make them there. The thing we had the most problems with, but is probably the most important thing (or it appeared to me but what do i know? I'm only an electronics guy) is the grip on the balls. If you have a good grip, and you have a good speed kicker, you can deliver the balls fairly efficiently. If its too loose, no matter how fast your kicker is, it won't move anything. If its too tight, it will just lift your robot on top of the ball instead of kick it.

Without seeing your bot, I couldn't tell you what I think is the problem and what you can do to fix it, but i'm sure you'll take a look at it and go ah hah! and get it. It happens all the time.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Well thank you for your help. You've been most gracious.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

This is great because back in NJ me and my coach, Rob, came up with this exact same strategy but were unable to do cause another robot got in our way. But this is great I thought no one else would ever think of this strategy to stop this kind of robot. :p

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Ah i remember that.... won of the best momants at Philly....

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

It's not that funny when it's your team robot that gets capped :) but got to hand to to the opposing team...that was a pretty smart idea to cap another robot :) Ofcourse there are tons of ways to counteract that :D

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I am not absoluly positive on this, someone told me capping a robot was now against the rules. Ill have to look it up. If some one else knows, let me know.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I don't exactly know if it is againt the rules but my coach did ask the head ref at NJ before we attempted this and his exact words "stick it in em."

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

We had a lot of debate in the pits and with a few other teams before we did this to 177. We were also worried that it might damage their mechanism and we didn't want to do that. One of the options was to just hold the big ball over 177's hopper and deflect the balls.

We got our comeuppance that match when the power connector to our arm motor came loose. We couldn't cap or hang after that.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Um, it is not against the rules, its still perfectly legal in the competition

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

Yeah... I have a hard time believing they would make this illegal to do.. especially since it is not intentionally damaging a robot... it's just simply an attempt to control their actions on the field- defense.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I haven't heard anything on the legality of this action, but I could see where both sides could have their arguement. I.E. - It should be legal for this purpose; It was an amazing defense move that messed us up for a little bit. It should be illegal because there are some robots out there that may not have the durability that our bot had and could break.

I suppose its up to the refs at each competition. I really hate to side with the side that capped my robot, but I do recall Dave Lavery saying make sure your bot could take a hit with a yellow ball. Don't worry though, our drivers know how to handle it now--preventing the ball from going in, and getting it out if it does.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

I'm sorry, I thought I heard somebody say that at Midwest. I must have been mistaken. Thanks for the clarification.

This happened to us. We almost came back and won the match, but we didn't collect enough balls to over come the other alliances points. It was still a GREAT match. Good job to Team 27 for using that strategy on us.

See you in Atlanta!!! :)

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

There was an official ruling that capping another robot is legal.

Yeah goign to the other side to catch against 27's drive train was not a good idea, they were the only team that could really move us.

However to I guess counter being capped, you cna just keep your funnel closed, or if they cap you and you still ahev the ability to collect, you still can do that.

Re: pic: Capping 177
 

We went to four matches in the quarter finals but were knocked out.

A team at SBPLI Regional approached us to do it to a team there, but something happened and we didn't have a chance to do it. We decided to use it agains 177 however.

Also I'd like to add that 177 really recovered and pushed the loose balls to their human player.

Also, I noticed after that match 177 really made sure this didn't happen again - the drivers would keep the nets closed until a second or two before the balls dropped. Good job guys. :)

We decided to drop it because we weren't sure if some of the balls would hit us, then we would be blocking them from falling in - which is against the rules I believe (I'm not positive about that however).