Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

remember if your bot can hold balls in a 60x60x60 size space thats about 8 ballx 8 ballsx 8 balls which is about 512 balls...im not sure bout my math but thats 64 per level and 8 levels is 512 balls. :D

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Your math seems righ to me and without expanding you should be able to hold all 80 balls

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Our team has considered the thought of robot harvesters begin able to put balls into our robot. But we came to the conclusion that they would be harvesting them most likely from the floor or hp. Now it the devise used to pick them up off the floor is reversed, then the balls can come out on the floor. What the harvester can do it get on the side that the shooter has its harvester and form a seal between the two robots with the bumpers and unload. That’s how we saw to solve this issue.

I would also like to say that I really don’t think there’s going to be a lot of balls on the floor. Yes the hps will miss from time to time, but if every robot harvests, and then there are going to be few balls on the floor. Also when talking strategy think about which hp on what team should throw the balls and to what robot. You are a team and you should strive to work as one.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Since the balls are 7 inches in diameter and the bumper zone is up to i think 8 and half inches? There would be no way a harvesting mechanism that can fit a bumper on the same side. Our harvesting mechanism cant simply reverse it self because it drops the ball into our basket/container after picking it up. We could dump the balls out like we would to a corner goal but that is not gonna be safe.

My impression was defense robots should make shooters miss if done correctly and from the replies in this thread it didn't seem many teams plan to have a large opening easy for human players to toss ball into. I'm not sure relying on being right outside of corner goals to get loaded from human player since that greatly restricts where you can move and defend in your defensive round. I actually think there would be quite a good amount of balls lying around on the field.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

True. BUT our team has come up with a non-blockable (possible) human player throw-in hopper that will hold about 12-14 balls. We figure the max size we need it to hold is about 10 balls anyways. by the time we harvest 5-6 balls we would already be too excited to shoot, why would a shooter bot need such a big hopper?

So i'm not sure how ( other than ramming the offence bot) how a defence bot could make the shooters miss? please explain.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

I'm not sure an effective stategy will be to make them miss, but to block their shot. Unless your shooter is 5" off the ground, a five foot tall robot can block your shots.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

I'm a rookie so I've never seen FIRST robots pushing each other, but I have the impression or rather the idea that if a defense robot pushes the shooter from a corner in the same direction their wheels are aligned it should apply a decent amount of torque to rotate their robot just a few degrees, which seems more than enough throw off their aim, and make them re align for the next shot.


the storage itself doens't have to be too big for a shooter, but you can make the opening on top wider so the human player have an easier time aiming the ball to throw into.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Well, First off, robots can be nasty. Remember back to kick-off where they spent like 2 minutes explaining how necessary it is to have bumpers? Our bot came back from regionals all bent up.

Personally I don’t think bots pushing each other is going to be harmful too much for shooters, at least for our shooter. We designed our shooter to shoot high rather than low. (Check our site ^^ ) and that way if a defence bot did try and block our shot. They wouldn’t be able to.

Other than that, we are designing a bumper system that is spring loaded to push other robots on the platform ( as a offence tactic rather than a defensive move ).

- JERY!!!!!!

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Yes, you are right about the bumper zone. BUT...1) bumpers are optional, and 2) where they go is your call. You are allowed to put gaps in, as long as there is no bumper at all in the gap.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Other than blocking and ramming, simply pushing can be used as a defensive strategy against shooters. Even if your robot can shoot over theirs, they can push your robot, meaning your robot would have to compensate for the movement to still land the ball in the goal. Even if you did this, they could still just push you out of range.

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

If you can scoop balls off the field AND if you can reverse your scoop and dump them back out then some shooters will be able to simple be fed by you reverseing you rscoop as then runs thiers in normal pick up direction.

Its one of the considerations we looked at when designing for this year. Either shoot or be able to feed a shooter.

Also I have said out loud (but not here on CD) that the game would be won in the last 40 seconds.

Since then I have changed my mind. I think that most games will be won in the first 10 seconds.

But that s the beauty of this game, until its played we won't know :-)

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

Not to pour water on the bright flames of innovation and all that, but it's important to consider what the bots can actually do.

I'm not completely sure about the intent of the posters of these calculations, so I won't try to ascribe any to them.

Facts:

The balls are 7'' in diameter (and weigh .183 kilos)
Your robot can start with ten balls.
Your robot can start at 28 38 60 and can expand to 60 60 60.

From the weight alone, I've calculated the weight of all 80 balls to be 32.208 Lbs (14.64 kilos using a 2.2 conversion). If your robot is 120 Lbs, and you have 15 Lbs of bumpers, and a 10 Lb battery, carrying all 80 balls brings you to more than 175 Lbs. Ouch. AND you're top heavy, unless you've expanded significantly.

7'' x 8 = 56'' which is indeed within the 60'' requirement. However, this assumes that the balls are packed in, if not perfectly, solidly.

OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOO

Sorry, my 64 O's are longer than they are thick. Oh well (hehe!). In actuality that's never going to happen unless you have some sort of soting device (and the six weeks fairly well procludes this), such as a robotic arm that stows the balls as they come in.

Secondly, there is no incentive to make a robot that could hold 80 balls (even if you could do this without making any large sacrifices to other design elements). Remember, there are 80 balls in the game. You will never be able to gather all of them. Even getting up to 40 balls at a time seems like a difficult task to me, as the field is (relatively speaking) large. If you, starting at the beginning of your attack period, averaged 1 ball per second, you would have no time left to score.

Expanding (hehe, the punmaster strikes again) on the mathematical ideas presented above, at the 28 38 60 dimension, you can (in theory, but never in practice), hold 4 by 5 by 8 balls. This is 8 layers of 20, or 160 balls, so indeed you can hold all the balls you need.

It seems incredible that this relatively small space could store 160 balls, but you have only to think of the fact we're dealing spacially to realize the vastness of that space. Think about the amount of cubic centimeters here: 1046150 approximately (feel free to check that, it's 28x38x60x2.54^3) /Yablowza/.

Enough math for now, my brain is fogging over.

P.S.: My intent is not to ruin your dreams, destroy your life, or otherwise wreck your strategy. But thats a good idea! =)

P.P.S.: Personal request: lessen the secrets talk. You've come here to talk. Do so (just my feeling)

Paul Dennis

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

were just going to suck from the floor and shoot sucking is the best way to go for a harvistor just some surgical tubing and some pvc pipe and you can suck more balls than 80 in the first 40 sec

Re: How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

i believe the game will be won in autonomus because if you controll from the start thers nothing that can stop u
thats why there are no empires that have fallin under there first king lol