How many teams suck?
 

Just curious, since there were only two suckers at the local scrimmage this weekend, how many teams are using some sort of vacuum apparatus to acquire and/or hold the ball? and if you do, how do you hurdle? (shoot or lift over) ours grabs with a vacuum funnel, and shoots the ball over with pneumatics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeQSGmFnKAE

While the other sucker team at the scrimmage (awesome rookie bot from 2415 Westminster WiredCats Robotics) was a lifter:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...highlight=suck

Re: How many teams suck?
 

I love the design, Very special and unique =)


www.team56.com

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Ours is a lifter, which we hope will get the trackball close and slightly above the trellis, release the vacuum and have the trackball sort of tumble over it. But we hope to be able to pick it up near the end of the match and simply place it on the trellis. The vacuum is both strong and allows us to have very good control of the trackball.

Re: How many teams suck?
 

rookie team 2415 also sucks.

1771, really like your sleekness. Its a good looking bot!

Re: How many teams suck?
 

The vacuum/shooter design is brilliant. It was awesome watching it go at the scrimmage, good luck at regionals!

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Just a bump to get this question back out there. There must be more than three vacuum gripper bots! Lets from all you suckers!

Re: How many teams suck?
 

326 also has some what of a vacuum style robot... to see it ya'll just going to have to wait until pittsburg to see it...

Re: How many teams suck?
 

After we sucked figuratively much less than literally last year, never again... have you tested your "sucker" with the ball being bumped, or in a less-than-optimal orientation to the robot? Those were our big problems last year...

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Last year the game piece was a torus, sub-optimal for sucking, this year it is a sphere, there is no "less-than-optimal orientation"

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Except for the porous fabric, seams, and zipper.

Re: How many teams suck?
 

team 1323 tried it with the inner tubes and it didn't work out to well for us, but the vacuum designs i see this year rock,

good luck

Re: How many teams suck?
 

We have tested the strength extensively. Basically there is no way to knock the ball off with any hit we could inflict to the ball. We tried kicking it slamming it into the ground hitting it repeatedly (I'm pretty strong) and every other way imaginable and the ball won't come off. We hold the ball with 360 lbs of suction so needless to say we're not worried about losing the ball. I would go so far to say that are gripper is probably one of the most secure ones. Additionally we can acquire the ball just by touching it, ,we don't have to press on to it for an extended amount of time.

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Well, say the ball is at a distance such that the sucker can't come in straight on... what happens then?

Re: How many teams suck?
 

How is that any different than if another robot's forklift isn't lined up straight-on? Either robot will have to move to adjust.

Re: How many teams suck?
 

Exactly. Also to take care of the vertical orientation we are using both a potentiometer and reed switches to tell us exactly the right height to pick up the ball.