How is everyone designing their basket for holding balls?
 

My team is making a harvester and we think that a great strategy is to transfer a very high number of balls from a harvester to a good shooter quickly and safely. We think most teams will have some kind of mechanism that picks up balls from the ground, but transfering ball by dropping them on ground next to an ally shooter is not very efficient or safe, also the balls are free for opposing robots to take or move. I think most teams will have an open basket of some sort to allow human players to toss balls in. So here is the question

What shape and how big are your basket openings and how high are they positioned? And where on your robot is it?Obviously if your basket is at the 5 feet limit it is very difficult for a harvester to pass balls to you because of the height limit. I think it would help everyone to have some sort of a standard for this. This way harvesters knows what they can expect in designing a transfer mechanism and the shooters can expect good allies that can supply them with balls without worrying how they can take those balls.

So again, What shape and how big are your basket openings and how high are they positioned? And where on your robot is it?

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

whoa. attempting to standardize basket openning sizes. good idea for the HPs . but sorry, so far we have no plans to have any top opening... hm.. although it may be boring, it could be a good plan. i unno... but so far we will not be joining that idea.

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

Well we are trying to design it 60" x 60" and 60" high! :)

but once we start integrating the basket with the shooter, and the ball collector, things might change!

I don't know if we can realistically create a side loader that would work.... but it is an interesting idea!

--Mike

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

we are going with a open top loader, human player loading is gonna be kinda important.
our storage system is a secret.

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

open top, though HP loading is not going to be very easy. storage system is secret, sorry

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

I'm not asking for your storage system. If you have an opening for human players to throw balls in, how big and what size is it? and how high above the ground will be the top.

I just need to know about the top opening, which is the info needed to figure out how to effectively transfer ball from a harvester robot to a shooter robot. If this could be standardized it would make the competition a lot more interesting and another very important factor to consider when picking alliances for champianship.

If a good harvester robot is picking the alliance then the shooter I'd pick not only would have to accurate and fast, but also convinient for me to dump all the balls my harvester have collected so the team can score much higher points with those balls. Same for a shooter, you maybe be able to shoot fast and accurate but as a shooter you are only so limited with size restriction and time you don't have time and opportunity to collect all the balls you want to shoot. So you would pick a harvester that is capable of this on your alliance. This is an aspect of alliance team work that can become a huge advantage.

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

Remember that you can surely make educated guesses to improve chances: Opening will be at 60" or below, so try to 'pop' balls up to a few inches above that. Also, center of robot will be between 13 and 30 inches from an edge, and a basket opening (if there is one) will likely be within this range. So, pop a ball a few inches above 60, and out maybe 20-24 inches (you can always move away a little bit), that should cover most of the other robots out there...

Don

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

I considered this and I think popping the balls up is much like shooting, if I can implement that on a harvester design I might as well be shooting the center goal by modifying that a little bit and utilize the balls myself. Also that is hard to get it more than a few balls at a time. From the videoes and teaser a lot of teams have put out, it seems many shooters are capable of shooting a LOT of balls really fast, but they lack the ability to have that many balls consistantly throughout the match. If I could just dump say 30 balls from my harvester efficiently at that speed then it becomes a huge advantage. There is only 2minutes and 10 seconds to the game, can't waste it all transfering 50 balls one at a time.

Currently my team is trying to design a ball release system with dynamic height changes, so not only would we be able to dump all the balls we harvest into the corner goal, we can adjust it so we can dump them all into an ally shooter. However I was afraid a majority of shooters will have a 5 feet tall basket making such manuever impossible. I want to see how many teams have considered this factor and how many teams will actually have a basket opening that is say 4 feet or lower.

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

We're not using a basket so... that idea doesn't work well for us.

You may want to consider only transferring a few balls at a time, because depending on the size of the shooter, shooter robots may not be able to hold that many balls, and dumping 30 into them could cause problems.

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

ours is pvc and we can roughly hold (this is only my guess) about 60+ balls

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

how are you going to hold 60+ balls?
Have you found a rule that will let you expnd your robot on the playing field?

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

If your shooting/collecting mechanism aren't taking up too much space you can probably hold atleast 60 balls in the 28 by 38 by 60 size limit if the rest of your robot was just a big box. Also the rule says you can expand up to 5 feet by 5 feet so that's an option to increase container capacity.

However it depends on how you make it since balls don't usually stack up nicely :)

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

oh lets just say we've got a secret weapon... :D

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

The 60" cube rule does provide enough room to store 60 balls. That being said its still a giant storage device and i doubt something that large would ever fill up to its liimit(although I would love to see the match where it does.)

My team's storage area will hold about 20 balls and come up to around the 4 foot mark probably. We're trying to make it work with an opening on the top and there will be one of some kind but the size and shape of it will probably be determined mostly by weight and time. I know that due to its design while it could accept balls quickly, probably not as quickly as you're imagining and for any high speed delivery it would have to be accurately placed.

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

Make sure you read the rules. When you start you have to be in a 28"x38"x60 area, and after the starting bell rings you can be 60"x60"x60". I know with just a box made to the 28"x38"x60" dimensions you will be able to hold all 80 balls but I believe those numbers were without a drivetrain and having it rest all the way on the ground.

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

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

Please, seriously, slow down, take a deep breath... and type. I'm not trying to mock you, everyone makes typos when they rush. However, it would be better for all reading this if we all took a moment to consider our thoughts and type more s l o w l y.

Just think about the rate that you are saying that you will aquire balls at. This rate is 2 balls/sec. I don't think that's realistic, but that's your opinion.

However, there is no way that you will be able to aquire more than 80 balls at any time. If what you meant to say is that you would aquire some balls, score, and then go get more, that's going to take a LOT of time. If you can put up 5 palls/sec, you just spent 16 seconds firing. And you spent time finding those 80 balls. Now you're going to go find more balls spilled out through the return mechanism? Think again.

Also, keep in mind that your opponents will have control of any and all balls that your teammates scored in the corner goals, and they will have no reason to throw those balls to you.

-Paul the Dreamcrusher

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

That is not necassarily true. If you go into a match, win autonomous, and then automatically assume that you will win the game, you are destined to lose. Although winning autonomous may increase your chances of winning, a sound strategy from the opposing alliance can very quickly overtake your lead and actually win. We have yet to see how any scrimmages or regionals will play out, but I will say right now that there will be a good number of teams who can lose autonomous and then overtake the deficit and win the game.

Getting back onto subject, just remember that if you decide to build the uber ball-holding robot that sucks up all eighty balls in the field, then what are the three opposing robots and your two team mates going to do during the match? Trying to convince the other two teams on your alliance to actually do nothing except load balls into your robot may not pan out as well as you think. For a lot of teams with an "average" robot, they would rather lose a match than listen to a "bossy" team with a good robot.

Just remember that when you devise your robot and strategy. Try to make your robot complement the other robots out on the field, not dominate over them. Pick one task and do it well. No one robot will be able to do everything on the field efficiently, so pick something and aim to be the very best [pick one] corner-goal-scorer/center-goal-scorer/defensive domination that you can be.

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

I think we have gotten off topic from my original topic. The objective of transfering balls to one robot is not to hoard all the balls on the field. The strategy was that since a harvester will probably be able to grab and control more balls than a shooter, you can put those balls to much better use by giving them to a shooter for 3 points each as opposed to one point each. I perfectly realize having all 80 balls is not feasible, but having a good 20-30 balls by the 3rd or 4th quarter is fairly realistic as a harvester robot. Surely you can dump them into the corner goal for 20-30 points but if time and opportunity allows, a well manuevered trasnfer can potentially increase that to 60-90 points. That is the reason I started this thread.

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

AS you said people shouldnt try to hoard all the balls. In the last couple years we have relized that you can go big and not always to good. Like last year with the tetras teams built bots that could stack 15ft high. How many matches actually came down to the last tetra needing to be placed 15 ft high. Most of the matches would go to 6 or 7 at the most sometime reaching 9 or 10. We have in the past years tried to be the best ball collector, the bot that can stack the highest tetra, and the bot that tries for the highest box multiplier. We haver lost track of the game and what it is trying to teach us. I think that teams last year wold go for a bot that could stack really high even if it was not that quick, because they thouht they would be picked for that reason. Last year the teams that won were fast at capping the tetras and good at the human and auto loader. We need to try and forget about trying to be the bot that stands out and be the bot that is really good. A number one ranked seed team is not going to pick a team that can stack 15ft tall if they can only do it once in a match. They are going to want teams that can stack quick. The ideal amount for a storage device should probaly be no more then 30 balls. Because even then you might average a ball every second, and thats one quarter of the game gone. I am not trying to say that bering able to pick up 80 balls is a bad thing but try for a ralistic number that you will see on the average match, not a number that you might see in a single match at one tournament.

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

What about Hitler?

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

[quote=jonathan_powers]i believe the game will be won in autonomus because if you controll from the start thers nothing that can stop u
/QUOTE]

Except if they know you'll win autonomous. The defensive stratgey is to do nothing during autonomous. They dump 30 balls in your goal, your alliance already has 40 in it's possession. They'll have only 10 to use for their offensive period. While you finish stocking your robots to the hilt. May be this is where a harveter transfer can work becuase you want to try to score the "stockpile" 50 - 10 seconds from the end so the opponents don't have time to use a lot of what you score.

Our robot has an open top but the sides go up to the 60" so can't be restocked from a harvester. I doubt any shooters could be re-stocked at 48" since that would compromise the design of a centre shooter..

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

first of all its good to have the capacity but do u reallyn think u could control 50 of the 80 balls in 2 min or even 30 which is possible but its still going to be hard

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

Here's some suggestions for you:

-See if you can possibly find a *safe* way to latch onto other robots. Make your robot an extension to theirs. Yes, its a crazy idea, but hasn't anyone though of an alliance multibot? think of the possible advantages to this cooperation. I think you might see alot of 28" wide bots in standard config rather than 38". So, think about that....
As per standard sizes, I think the thing you need to focus on the most is height. If you have some sort of conveyor systems that drops balls into an open-top hopper, its likely that they're not going to be *too* tall. Possibly 4ft or less?

I think this is a really unique idea, toss around with other ways to make it unique and let it have a chance!

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

Meh I guess thats too bad then. I was hoping more shooters would have a lower basket.

We are looking into modifying our harvester to pop balls out the top efficiently and quickly by simply reversing/modding our harvesting mechanism so we can transfer to shooters with 5 feet high basket openings.

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

Personally, our hopper is about 26" off the ground.
I'm suprised so many other teams are going with tall robots. I'm guessing they aren't going for the ramp.
Our bot will be quite low, and quite capable.....

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

I think most shooters go for max height so its very difficult if not down right impossible to block their shooting mechanism. However my opinion is that just because the shooter is high doesn't mean the hopper has to have a max height opening.

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

Two words: Ferris Wheel :eek:
That is all that I am at liberty to say.

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

One thing I think needs to be kept in mind, restocking by hps is going to be harder than all this talk assumes. Have you seen the arena?
Unless you have a very tall hp, accurately loading a robot will be quite hard. Just something you may need to keep in mind...

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

In 2004, the HP was chucking 13 inch playground balls, into a cylinder 20 feet away, with approximately about a 30 inch opening, over that wall. And that was how you scored! I can't do it, but there are over 1000 people that have field experience doing it. So, it's possible.

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

Um... Many people have been talking about blocking shots. Unfortunately for people who have been designing to block shots from the beginning, there is a rule against this - you can't purposely place your robot in front of another robot to block their shots, and there is a 5 point penalty per ball - this can add up fast. So, if many people don't know about this, perhaps it would be good to put your shooting mechanism lower down - you could penalize them massively.
--phobbs

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

Welcome to FIRST and congratulations on your first CD post.

Can you direct me to the rule you reference above? You can just post the rule number, I can look it up from there.

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

http://www.valleytech.k12.ma.us/robo...2%20Sunday.jpg

this what it looked like and

http://www.valleytech.k12.ma.us/robo..._ball-goal.JPG

is how it worked

Yes if you wanted to build a robot that stores all the balls then dump them very quickly this could be a option for you. Two sets of rollers one to pick up and one to discharge them this machine could stores easily 40 small balls and be able to get rid of all of them within 5 seconds. with a open middle you could throw balls into it and use the ball roller for a backboard. very easy to make the shot.

this unit is very light, it is made up of light square tubing and very thin Sheet metal. so you can make a very strong base and not worry about flipping over

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

This is a mis-interpretation of the rules.

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

Sorry guys - should have read the rule for myself before posting. :( Either way, it's going to be difficult to block a robot unless you are right in front of it - but then they can back up.
Again, sorry.
--phobbs

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

We haven’t decided on how we’re going to hold the balls but one of the more interesting suggestions that has been recommended was the extending laundry basket

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/store...roductId=58670

This would allow your robot to fit the dimensions and then extend to 5 feet. They are also very lightweight and cheap (7.99 at Ikea). Good Luck. :D

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

Hey, thats where holonomic drive comes in!:)

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

Ditto, we veto'ed that idea.

-Pavan

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

I don't recall the rules stating what condition the balls need to be in when fired


Ever heard of a paper shredder? :rolleyes:

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

We Are planning tohave an open bin on top. We are not collecting balls from the floor on the hope that our alliances will be able to put balls in our open top robot.

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

I'm 6'5" :) :p

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

Consider rule <G19>, which states that robots cannot damage field equipment. The balls are game objects and cannot be damaged, within reason.