Best Ball Collecting device of 2002
 

Teams this year had some awesome ways of collecting and scoring balls, what were some of your favorites?



There was a team at MMR that had this ball collector that sucked balls up and rolled them on this rube goldberg like device and then it stopped on this flipper that a push of a button, flipped the ball into the basket. It was one of the coolest design I saw.

*Edit: It wasnt as fast or effective, but it was really cool to watch


Note to anyone who went to MMR: Do you remember what team it was, i am sure it was in the 500s.

Easy

173 and Buzz Robotics

yea, i liked the team with the corkscrew design. I forget who it was... but it sucked up the balls.. span em up this corkscrew lookin device.. and spit it out into the goal.. it was quality...

I think that 157 had the best, and loudest ball collection system.

dont forget team 95
 

dont forget about our 20 balls in 5 secs.:D heres the video again for those how havent seen it yet

The best ball collection system I saw the whole year was 86's...fast, and the basket hold around 40 balls...I think it took 30 seconds to sweep the whole field for balls and dump them...

It even had nice horizontal rollers to help run the edge...

Plus it made pac man noises when it collected and a toilet flushing when it dumped!!

86 as definitely the most amusing in my eyes... the pacman sounds were key... all nostalgic and stuff:)

I don't know which one I liked the best, but I was impressed by 16, 111, 67, 45, and 86. All had good, solid robots with good ball-handling capability.

/me grrrs... What happened to team 5's system of getting the balls into the goal?!?! Anyone what went to the GLR or the CR saw us in action, and we kicked @$$!!! That was so cool!! But i do have mad-props for 47, they where cool!

95 for sure. You could blink and suddenly there'd be no balls left out there.

i think 121 was pretty cool. many teams had trouble getting rid of the balls after they collected them in a basket. they however made the basket move up and become a 45 degree sloped surface which made sure that all balls went in. i think they got pretty far in the championships too.

Theres more then meets the eye...

Getting the balls was one thing, getting them in a goal was a whole other challenge. Lot's of teams could do one or the other very well, but not so many could do both fast enough or reliably enough. It's great if you can get 20 balls in 5 seconds, being able to dump them in 5 seconds to is a real advantage. After that, things like gear switching and strong brakes really help ball collectors.

My picks for top ball handlers would be 173 or 175. 173 didn't have the capacity of a lot of other ball 'bots, but they made up for it with consistent accuracy and a strong drive. 175 had great capacity along with a switching drive and strong goal claw. These two in my mind had the best balence of goal handling and ball handling needed to be excellent in both qualification and finals.

Now, thats not to say 95 isn't up there on my list...

-Andy

Re: dont forget team 95
 

Oh yeah! 95 was incredable. When they first went out, during the practice rounds, they scooped 20 balls, an entire side, in a clean swoop.

Let me tell you, all the strategy people in the stands began scribbling into palm pilots, writing on papers, sobbing into hankies, or a combination thereof...

Team 95: definitly the sweetest ball getter out there: even now, I associate grasshoppers with soccer balls:D

In order to be the best ball bot, you have to be able to not only pick balls up fast and reliably, you have to be able to control them and dump them with confidence. Teams 95 and Buzz 175 were awesome at picking up the balls with lightning speed, but when it came to dumping, balls often got stuck. Im not a fan of the basket because it often required alot of shaking to get all the balls out and some end up missing. RAGE 173 was also a great ball picker upper, not as quick as 95 and 175, but they clearly had the best control of the balls. They were able to drop the off frontwards and backwards with percision everytime. This is what i think makes a great ball bot. Being able to control the goal after the balls are in it is important too, so thats why I am giving a joint award to 173 and 175. congrats.

My vote for "best ball collecting device of 2002" would have to go to 95, hands down. Sure, there were other great teams out there, but I haven't seen a team yet that could pick up balls as well as these guys..I want to give an honorable mention to 45, because I still can't believe they got their method of collecting balls to work. If I were the one trying to tweak that program, I would have FAILED!

95. Nuff' Said

95 was the best!!! The "popcorn popper" design rocked!!
I saw them for the first time during the Quincy mini scrimmage and they rocked. They had the motors geared a little too high at first though and just shot all the balls right up and out of the hopper but then they finally got it down to a nice RPM to handle the balls very efficiently!!
You guys rocked!!!

If you don't say 95 its cause you haven't seen them. They are simply amazing! The only downfall i saw of theirs was that they filled the goal TOO MUCH and couldn't get all the balls out of their basket!

we are no grasshopper (you guys rocked with that popcorn popper, i was impressed back in quincy)...... but we did average more than 20 balls per match

Our robot, NAIA III, had a solid collection and a ball launching system that allowed it to continually pick up and shoot balls into the goal.

Please visit our site and take a look. We have some video clips of the robot in action. The Hawaii 5-0 theme song is pretty good too.

Re: dont forget team 95
 

Re: dont forget team 95
 

Team 95 had the most impressive ball collecting device i saw. I can't wait to see them again May 18th.

utc
 

that was taking at utc.

I didn't get to see Team 95 compete but the video IS impressive!

MIke Rush
Team 64

Those Grasshoppers at 95...
 

95 definitely had the best ball collecting system. They just moseyed on over to the balls on the side and they were all in the collection bin, ready for dump. Solid as a rock and untippable, unlike a few notably top-heavy and quite tipsy bots, including BUZZ, which had an elaborate high-dump mechanism. 95 was definitely the team to be allied with. Heck, I'm proud to say that I had the pleasure of being on a qualifying alliance with team 95, and I hope to see you all at the J&J next year.

Re: Re: dont forget team 95
 

HOW THE *$%# DID YOU DO THAT? THAT WAS AWESOME!

:cool: I definitely think that Chief Delphi, team 47, had one of the best ball mechanisms. I loved to watch it when it dumps balls, because it has to shake and shimmy! :)

from what i have learn
 

from what i have learn is that the rollers are driven by the price motor and belt driven heres a photo of the rollers the only one i have right now.

Best rookie ball machine
 

There were some amazing ball machines out there. Out here on the west coast, we didn't see that many, but at the Championships, we were very impressed.

We are a rookie team and, at the risk of being immodest, I think we had the best rookie ball machine. (We won the Rookie All-Star Award at the Los Angeles Regional.) If you know of any other good rookie ball machines, please post the info.

Below is the link to a short clip of our robot picking up 9 balls (which is all we could find at our school) in 3 seconds. We could handle about 16 in actual competition. If we picked up more, our pneumatics needed some robot shaking to help get the basket up.

Our major weak point was probably speed. We were nervous about changing to high gear because sudden turns tended to blow fuses, so we stayed in low gear. Hey, next year, we are going to ...

By the way, we competed against Team 86 and Team 1 in the Einstein Division match 64, and Team 86 was awesome at getting balls. Their alliance had us beat but decided to go for 2 more balls. Then for some reason, they didn't make it back to their home zone, and we won 43 to 42. So to Team 86, you guys deserved that one. (Of course we gave one away ourselves by not just raising our basket again to dump a ball that stayed in our basket. We lost by ... one ball, and would have won the tie if we had dumped that ball. Live and learn. Yes I know, I posted about that before but ...)

Short Clip: http://home.pacbell.net/pinewood/mov...DayShortSm.mov

There were alot of great robots that i saw, just from experience with them, i got to say, 16. you gotta love em

If you really wanna know about 95...

The entire front end of the 'bot is devoted to the ball. The back end is filled with 'guts'.

There are a total of 10 (or close to it) rollers that run the width of the bot. There is one set of 4 furthest to the front, and a second set of 6 behind them, the width of a soccer ball between the two sets. Each roller has it's own coating of rubberized fabric that gives a good grip on the balls and cusions the rollers from the impact of balls hitting them. The balls move from roller to roller at very high speed, with out the hooper on top they will fly 7 or 8 feet in the air. The extra cusioning avoids dents in the rollers.

Each set is powered by a fisherprice motor with a custom gear box (I don't know the exact ratio). They are belt driven (half inch timing belt i belive, don't quote me on that though). They spin at several hundred RPM at least. When the rollers run inwards balls are pulled in and up into the hopper. The rollers and hopper are seperated by a 'check valve'. The valve is made of poly carb 'fingers' and acts like a lobster trap. Balls have enough energy from the rollers to pass through with out jamming, but thier weight isn't enough to drop them back down into the rollers.

The roller motors are under variable speed, since as more balls are picked up the rollers must spin faster to displace the ones already collected. This is done with a pot on the operators switch box. Needless to say, correctly adjusting the roller speed is a fine art.

On paper, we should be able to get 40 balls in a goal with in the first minute of the match. More often it's been a matter of waiting for our ally to get a hold of a goal before we dump our balls.

So thats pretty much how you get 20 balls off the ground in 5 seconds...

-Andy A.

I'd say team 95 had the coolest ball collector!!!

Our ball collector as pretty effective, we had a vertical conveyor belt and a corkscrew design that fed into a ball shooter. It was pretty cool the times it worked perfectly. :D