Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

302 was getting in trouble for thier robot design and playiing style and had to make adjustments for day 2 of Buckeye so they wouldn't get penalized so much.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

I have a video on my computer from the first week of regionals and I see plenty of contact from that. We got tipped 3 or 4 times (we had a high CG but only twice when we went over was it becuase of normal interaction). Also I have videos of us getting spun around in a circle on our front omni wheels. And finally I have a video from a team with 4 wheel omni drive that just slid across the field with a shove. So originally there was contact. Just with so many penalties involving defense it is becoming harder and harder to pull it off penalty free.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

Our team didn't have much contact as we weren't asked to play defense much, but one match another team was guarding us. Our driver kept moving, and we didn't slow down much, just pushed them across the field like they weren't even there. I thought it was absolutely exhilarating to see our robot do that. It wasn't the fact that we pushed them around, it was the fact that they didn't affect us much at all.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

I congraulate FIRST for leveling the playing field this year, by providing all teams with a very servicable drive train right out of the box. This allows for an exciting game even for rookie teams. I hope I'm not hearing that the kit was too good this year.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

I've seen teams with excellent drive trains take the win and play successfully. It's not the drive train thats getting teams penalized... it's the strategy. Teams use their speed to fly across the field and cap tetras or get in the way of other teams... and then when the they are about to get a push from the other team they can use to drive train to hold their ground or keep the opponents from advancing. I'd expect that if you hit other robots excessively or shove teams across the field with your beastly drive train then you'd incur some penalties, because that is not what the game should be about. Playing defense doesn't mean slamming the other robot around, it simply means graciously preventing them from accomplishing their task. You can do that with out shoving them across the field or heavily ramming them.

With my team, we have an excellent swerve/crab drive system. It took alot of time to design and engineer. I would definitely say it's incredible and it surely hasn't been a disappointment. But for defense we have taken a different approach to stopping the other team. We use our arms to steal tetras in the air from teams or lay our arms over the goals to block them from capping that specific goal.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

see our team was all excited for our two speed gear boxes this year and it turns out we never use them and sumtimes they hurt us becuz we forget to put the air in for them to be engaged and then we cant drive just with the huge tetras and the robots in the loading zones this year's game is not a big driving game it kinda disappointed me but its still exciting just different

nationals here we all come

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

At the Lone Star regional competition I saw a lot of pushing in the matches we were in. One of the guys on our team spent a lot of time working on our drive train and I really think it gave us a huge edge. One thing we did was we would get the back left or back right goal, which allowed us to make many more rows. Having a strong drive train really helped us get back where we wanted to go without wasting all our time. Also, in the semi-finals we had a robot harassing us like crazy. Luckily it didn't drastically impair our performance, though we did have to make some quick repairs right afterwards.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

Wasn't it a bigger field than the past several years? No matter.

It wasn't a pushing year, for variable gear ratios. 2002 was a good year for fast robots, then switching to high torque.

This WAS a year for manuverablity. Pushing and racing didn't matter AS much. getting right where you wanted, however, was very important.

I LOVED this game. I LOVED the kitbot. Watching the finals (after we got elimiated) at Western Michigan, I realized that I was watching a complex, and very accuate, robot ballet as they danced around each other. I've never seen such amazing driving. WAY cooler that the jerky pounding and mashing of controls I've become used to. This was a drivers/controlers game in my opinion. Wonderful!

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

This year we have the best drivetrain Team Fusion has ever had. Its a 4 CIM powered, 6 wheel drive, zero turn radius, tank drive. During the finals one team played defense on us while we were capping and did incur a ramming penalty for it. We were able to push back and push them around in low gear, but they were successful in keeping us from scoring as many tetras as usual. We are very proud of our robot and team despite how we didnt get very far in elimination rounds and cant wait to get to Atlanta and show everyone else how great it is.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

I must respectfully disagree.

What you have said, it would seem, is that ALL of the experience that various teams' (including your own) students and mentors gained in creating magnificent drive systems is not rewarding.


Do you really mean to say that all the learning that is involved in designing and building those awesome drive systems is completely worthless?

Perhaps it should be pointed out that that there are plenty of teams that strove for magnificence, succeeded, and feel that it is worth it not only because they succeeded in the competition (see teams 71, 111, and 118), but also because of how much their students learned in designing and building those drive systems.

Additionally, your team and others who spent lots of time designing great drive systems now have this drive system to rely on in future years. You will be able to teach new students how it works, help them figure out ways to make it better, and be able to spend more time during next year's season designing and building other parts of your robot.

-Andrew

P.S. I must admit that I am envious of your situation. I hope that my team can emulate your team's success in designing, constructing, and implementing an awesome drive system in our future robots. :)

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

well i'd say torque and power isn't what this years game is the best for, speed and agility are more important this year than ones ability to charge into another robot. Sure, there will be some bumping and pushing, but this year if you have a robot that can get from point a to point b faster you probably have the advantage. But another factor comes into play this year, an outstanding rookie drive train, with the get tranny, the standard was raised with drivetrains signifigantly.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

At Lone Star there was quite a lot of contact in the the elimination rounds. Robots on all alliances pushed others around the field and there were some mistakes when a robot was tipped over but I do not believe that a robot tipping over should be an automatic penalty on the defensive team. If a robot has a high center of gravity, especially when they have a tetra in the air and a small robot pushes at there base to stop them from capping and that robot tips then there should be no penalty. We designed our robot to stack very high but still have a low CG so even when another robot pushed us around with a tetra in our fork trying to cap the center goal we never tipped over. Also having defensive strategies allows for a lot of rookie and under funded teams to build a small powerful robot that can be a great help to an alliance in the elimination rounds even if they do not have the expertise to build an advanced object manipulation device.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

I agree with you that just by tipping a team over you shouldn't get penalized, but the team you were referring to continuously rammed robots all day. I wasn't surprised when they received that penalty. The first minute of the match they were hitting us and the last minute they were hitting our alliance members. I don't believe the penalty was called just for them tipping over 57, but for the hitting that occured the whole match.

1255 proved how effective a defensive robot can be. They prevented us from capping a lot of goals.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

well in any case i do hope that FIRST uses the same kit for next year since it seemed in my view as a big success you just need the right game to really benefit all the good stuff such as defensive plays and offensive plays.

Re: Disappointing year for Incredible Drive Systems
 

The Beach Bots would have liked to try a new, highly maneuverable drive system this year, but the wheels got held up in manufacturing. As it was, we went with a six-wheel drive system that was new for us.

At the Southern California Regional, the play became much rougher, even wild, in the elimination matches. We had a lot more ramming and tipping than in the qualification matches. In one match, another robot's arm became entangled with Beach Bot's arm. Beach Bot started dragging that other robot around the field, and the two robots had a sort of wrestling match until a minor part on Beach Bot's arm broke. Then they continued normal play.