Shooters
 

Has anyone else noticed that shooters dominate?

Team 1114 was a great example of this, although team 25 had to slow down they were awsome as well, and 118 looks like they could be a very strong shooter(although they haven't played yet)

These aren't the only good shooters, they just stood out to me.
If you have other shooters that you want to mention please do.

Re: Shooters
 

A few others I liked from Midwest : 71, 1625, 16, and 1024. Also even though 33 wasnt a shooter, their lifter could keep up with most shooters.
Joey

Re: Shooters
 

Don't forget 103 ;) and also 1980
they rocked the NJ regional once again.

Re: Shooters
 

After seeing video of midwest and being in NJ driving I found that it is not necessarily shooting the ball but the ability to hurdle without stopping. The only real shooters in NJ were 103 and 25 but a couple of robots like 694 and 293 we able to lift the ball up and hurdle it without stopping. I believe team 33? had a similar capability to 293 where the top of the gripper folded down so the robot could go under the overpass without stopping.

Re: Shooters
 

I agree that hurdling without stopping is very important. It seem to me most of the teams that have been mentioned that have competed so far have been highly successful. My team was getting nervous about our launcher, but it seems like we'll be alright;)

Re: Shooters
 

The other big stopping point (which is just as important as stopping after hurdling) is the ability to corral the ball after hurdling. It doesn't matter if you have a fantastic full-speed shooter if it takes you 20 seconds to regain control of the ball afterwards. An arm bot with fantastic picking-up abilities will beat a shooter bot who can't load consistently.

Actually, I would argue that pickup is MORE important than hurdling. A good arm bot is only stopped for 5ish seconds following a hurdle while the arm retracts. However, the difference between 1114 and the field was that they could get the ball back under control almost immediately upon reaching it, while other teams were less good at that. The amount of time you lose with a poor pickup is almost certainly greater than the time lost even with the slowest of arm-retractions. I noticed 25 had issues on occasion with poor picking-up and it seemed to hurt their scoring abilities in the qualifying matches.

Re: Shooters
 

Our robot isn't exactly a shooter, it does have a small launcher in the claw that kicks the ball over, I would say it's more of a hybrid, and we are working on an even more effective launcher for our next regional

Re: Shooters
 

1726 defiantly stands out to me, watch out for them in Arizona! 342 also has a good shooter;). We're coming out week 3 at Florida.

Re: Shooters
 

Based on what I saw in Portland, grabbing the ball quickly and reliably is more important than hurdling quickly. The team from Hawaii (368) could approach the ball at basically full speed and just vacuum it up then pause slightly to hurdle. They were, imho, the most dangerous robot on the floor at that tournament. Any time they spent stopping to hurdle was compensated for the fact that they didn't need to stop to grab the ball. Team 100 could suck the ball right off the overpass, meaning they didn't need to compete for a ball at the start of most matches, and could suck it up off the floor almost as well as 368. Most shooters had to stop to grab the ball.... with the occasional exception of 472 who completed the "shoot bounce grab" routine without even slowing down at least once... and to a loud round of applause.

That said, there were only three real "shooter" bots out of 55 machines at the competion... us, 472, and 360... all of whom were in the elminations, 472 right up to the end. Just because you can shoot doesn't mean you CAN'T grab the ball... you just sacrice a bit of time doing it relative to a great lifter.

A shooter like 1114, however, appears to shift the balance by combining the speed of pickup of a good lifter with the speed of hurdling of a good shooter.

Darn sneaky Simbotics folks. They are doing it again!

Jason

Re: Shooters
 

I definitely agree that a solid pick-up is key to being a successful robot. I feel like people have been under estimating shooters, but we'll wait and see what happens in a couple more weeks. Maybe shooters won't end up being as valuable as I observed them to be in the first week of competition.

Re: Shooters
 

Re: Shooters
 

Look at the shooters that dominated--with the exception of 1625, which is the newest of the bunch, 1114, 71, 16, etc have dominated for years.

While you predicted shooters would dominate, it could just as easily have been predicted that those teams which made shooters would dominate on the basis that they've always been good.

There's going to be a whole lot of shooters that are no good, and a lot of arm robots that are.

Re: Shooters
 

Well, since we are linking threads here, I'll draw a quote from the thread you reference:

In Portland shooters did not dominate. (I wish they did... we were one of them.) They did well, but not dominate. None of the shooters came close to being "the simplest bot imaginable", and although at least one used a kitbot drive base (why not?) it was heavily modified. If shooters are "simple" then why did less than 6% of teams at this regional build one?

The only truly dominant shooter I have seen so far is 1114 (although there may be other examples that is all I have seen) and I would hardly call their elegant and effective solution to the hurdling problem simple. Effective, yes, elegant, yes, but not simple.

I think the first weekend of regionals has greatly reduced the potential for describing this year's games and robots in a cynical fashion. No one technology or design has demonstrated an insurmountable advantage over any other design.

Jason

Re: Shooters
 

That team was 473 from Montana. Additionally, we also built a shooter. There's at least one match where everything worked well. Unfortunately, a pot on our grabber broke on Saturday, rendering us rather ineffective. Thanks to Eugene Brooks and team 1280, we got it fixed before eliminations, but unfortunately we weren't selected.

We'll be coming full force to San Jose (first time ever we have competed before San Jose) and we'll be ready to go.

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My apologies to 473 for the numbering error, and also to team 8 for not listing you as a "shooter". I did not list your machine as a "shooter" not because I forgot it (it is a very cool design and hard to forget), but rather because it struck me as more of a hybrid "shooter/arm" mechanism. I tend to classify shooters as those that pick up the ball and hold it inside their original starting dimensions and then launch using a relatively short but speedy mechanism, kind of like 1726 and 118, to use some commonly referenced examples. I saw your design when it was working well, and it looked really good but wasn't sure whether to count it as a "pure shooter" because I didn't know if the robot could work as an "arm-bot" for lifting the ball over or poking balls off as well. (Not that pure shooters can't knock balls down, but typically they don't use their shooting mechanism to do it.)

Jason