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.

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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

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

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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.

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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;)

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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Well 148 is neither a shooter nor an arm and it went undefeated at St. Louis.
And 121 dominated BAE.
So I don't think it's fair to say if it's not a shooter it's worthless junk. In fact to assume that is just bad scouting in my opinion.

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Really? Based on the winning alliances in Oregon, St. Louis, and New Hampshire I'd think arms had a pretty good weekend as well. So far very few teams have "dominated". 1114 is typically agreed on as the best machine, but even they lost twice in qualifications, and encountered some trouble with the #2 ranked alliance in the semi-finals. 103 was as close as any individual team I saw came to dominating the competition, but they are the exception rather than the rule, and it would have been interesting to see how they would have done in Chicago.
Ultimately it comes down to your overall speed in every mechanism, not just the mechanism used to hurdle. The teams that are up near the top are not only hurdling quickly (which many arms can do), but also getting around the field quickly, removing the ball form the overpass quickly, and acquiring the ball quickly.

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And having a very effective Hybrid mode. 1024 and 1114 were a deadly Hybrid combination.

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Comparing a high school track star and an Olympic sprinter would also be bad scouting. It simply isn't fair.

'Arm bots' aren't worthless junk, but it would be interesting to see some of these teams mentioned in this thread play head to head. The level of play at the Midwest regional was pretty much double (IMHO) that of any other week 1 regional. The dominant teams at MWR seemed to all be 'shooters', with the exception of 33. But... as said many times before, there will be a handful of great robots, some shooters, some with arms.

I'd pick a winning strategy over sheer force any day. It seems 148 chose the same at St. Louis, but only time will tell if it can hold.

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148 and 217 as well.

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Who were the finalists at MWR? 111 and 1243 both have arms (I can't recall their other team not because they were inferior but because I know both these teams from other experiences)

Both types of teams have a place in this competition, I have a hunch that arms are going to get better in the coming weeks as drivers get more used to gaging their depth on the field. Also I am sure the reflections on the field didn't help much. It will be interesting to watch and see if maybe shooters hit their high point to soon in the season. Truth be told, I don't feel either can dominate the other.

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I believe I was trying to make the same point as you?

I just dont think saying "Oh man look only 2/5 regionals were won by shooters in week one! Arms must be the best!!!11!!!" is a very smart thing to do. Its week 1... things change.

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Of the four shooters that were at GSR, none of them made it to the semi-finals.

I really like the point about 1114, 16, 71, and 1024 and how they are always good. I bet those four teams could have built arm/lift robots that dominated.

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I'll say this: shooters are doing good, arms are doing good. IMHO, shooters are doing better, I just don't know the quality of the shooters at regionals other than NJ and Midwest.

By far, shooters are the most fun to watch (at least on the webcast) ;)

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I'm going to have to say that this first week may have been misleading in showing the true strengths of robots. It is tempting to say that shooters dominate, but I think that a better statement would be that well built robots dominate. Watching the New Jersey regional I think that there are several very well designed arm bots that can score as fast a shooter.

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Good working robots are more fun to watch. That's why the elims are where the event really comes alive.

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Yup i dont think its fair to say that shooters dominate (although Sparky and Blue Cheddar are pure shooters) Its all about timing, talent and luck

Wish us luck,
VCU Regional [next weekend]
:)

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I would have to argue that, when you compare this year's bot to every other bot they have produce it is by far the simplest bot they have ever built, no amazing box stacker, no platform climbing crab drive with hanging arm, no double jointed arm, no tank drive poof ball shooter, and no folding ramp with a 4-bar arm that fit within 4" (or something ridiculous like that). I would say their '06 bot was fairly simple, but when you look at their mechanism this year its what, a single joint with a roller manipulator and a 'punch' kicker (its pretty simple mechanism), I would say their bot is a very simple solution to this year's game. When you compare it to what a lot of the other 'top' teams came out with looks fairly darn simple to me, maybe its just the machining quality that makes it look more complex then it is.

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I can think of at least one more ;)

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I think we can all agree on this: exceptional robots do exceptionally. Yes, 33 has an amazing arm bot that can score really fast, and yes, 1114 can hurdle at a blistering pace. The same goes for 111, 16, 25, 103, 1625, 71, and so on. You could go tit-for-tat for days citing good arms and good shooters and never reach a conclusion over which is the superior design. The only real conclusion you could ever reach by looking at specific robots is that you need a good robot to have a good robot. Duh!

On a purely theory based level with all other things being equal, I think shooters do have a higher upper bound on their hurdling rate than arms - most shooters can save time by not stopping. Arms are clearly more versatile than shooters; it may be possible for some shooters to fire a low-powered shot onto the overpass, but I highly doubt such a strategy will have anywhere near the placing reliability that a decent arm does.

Regardless of the hurdling method used, it is clear that the biggest determinant in a given robot design's effectiveness in this game is its ability to acquire the ball reliably. You can have the most amazing arm/shooter in the world, but if you can't get the ball to it, it is useless. I imagine that, in many cases, this is where shooters fall short. Many of the average and below-average arms fall short here too. All the good hurdlers have mastered acquiring the ball, and that is really what matters in this game, not whether the robot is a shooter or an arm bot.

For the record, my team's robot is both (if we get the shooting portion to work properly).

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Right now I think it is hard to compare arm and shoot stats. Arms out number shooters almost 4 to 1. If there were equal number of shooters and arms, imho, regional finals would be filled with mostly shooters. But there isn't. So while shooters may not "vastly dominate", they will be greatly valuable to any alliance.

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I agree completely with your point that being able to pickup the ball quickly is more important than being a great hurdler. This will become even more so, as defensive strategies develop in upcoming regionals. For instance, will we see more "deny the opponent the ball" strategies as we move toward Atlanta? A fast arm bot should be able to effectively slow down a great shooter if their pickup is not flawless.

I saw several instances in the NJ regional where the ball was pushed or was stopped on the trailing line of one of the quadrants. 25 was unable to pick up the ball in this case, and if they tried the would run the risk of a line violation penalty. They were fast enough that the could zip around the track and get to a track ball and score, but this cost them valuable time. In the end it didn't matter as they won the regional for the 3rd? year in a row, but I didn't witness any teams really trying to stop them.

I know this game was introduced as a "coopertition", and I think that great defense may be one of those cooperative skills we haven't yet seen. As usual, in the early regionals most teams go with what they designed their robots to do. In this game that means either running laps and/or hurtling, but with only two track balls, how many great hurdlers do you need on an alliance? I think the role of the third pick in the elimination rounds will become more focused on defense and endgame capabilities. Of course a great hybrid mode won't hurt.

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I agree that maybe saying "shooters dominate" was a little bit of an exaggeration. A point was brought up that all the good shooters were very accomplished teams, but I have seen accomplished teams with elevators. From what I observed they can put up a fight against the shooters, but I think more often than not the shooters will win.
From what I've seen it's hard to find many elevators(by accomplished teams or not) that can stack up against shooters like 103, 25, 16, 1024, 1625, 71 and 1114.

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A couple comments on pick-up. From what we experienced and saw between arms & shooters, pick-up probably made the biggest difference between the good and best hurdlers, particularly being able to pick-up in traffic and from the #1 driver station looking through the reflection/glare from the divider.

At MWR, the divider reflection was very challenging- (our base driver who had never driven, or even been to an event before for that matter) initially had a lot of trouble losing sight of the robot. Eventually she settled in and we talked her in but having a claw gripper made it tougher than we would have liked. Whereas the roller feeder robots could just slam into the general area and more easily drive towards the ball and either grab it or drive it to where it could be seen and then grabbed & hurdled. During elims we had a lot of front row opportunities to watch 1114 do this handling very-very effectively. (Great job guys!!)

Before you can hurdle or place the ball, you have to be able to get the ball!! We're be looking at possibly upgrading or revising our gripper prior to West Michigan.

Regarding our arm. We were happy it performed as well as it did, but agreed it needs to be faster- we used the van door motor for the arm and globe for the wrist- Making the 180 deg. swing front & back took more time than we liked and required more anticipation on the arm drivers part to be ready to grab, but again it functioned when needed and we saw a lot of teams successfully using the VDM on their arms.

The wrist was another story though. The globe motor was fine until it got hot, it took a while for us to figure this out very late Friday by then it was too late to do much about it besides replace it and plan for the next event. We'd do fine the first couple matches and practice (we actually made it out for practice match #1- a big accomplishment for us, especially at the 1st event of the season :) ) but then as the pace picked up the performance was sketchy and we couldn't figure out what happened until it finally outright failed.

On Elevators, (btw: Wildstang, 1504 and one of the Winners- sorry I forget their name right now, were Elevator robots as was Team #33 I believe.) The biggest challenges we saw were them getting caught up on the overpass, and in many cases high CG tipping when loaded with a raised ball in traffic, or again hitting the over pass, hanging up or close-lined. Also, air consumption of larger cylinders used on some robots often meant that tactical adjustments had to be made to allow for recharging the air systems between hurdle attempts. All of which were manageable and less of a challenge as the event went on.

As always though, it comes down to robot capability, field tactics, and simple execution out there, especially in the elims. Every type of robot can play this game and play it well once they align their tactics and strategy with their capabilities and execute their plan.

Biggest word of advice to all teams: Watch the penalties!! With all the action going on especially when chasing hurdled balls in traffic jams, the refs can't always tell if you broke a plan on purpose or were pushed so for consistency it seems they typically hit you anytime the robot broke a plane- unless it was very obvious.

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The Thunder Chickens (217) were amazing at St. Louis this weekend. They managed to hurdle (5) times in just about every match that I saw. That statistic may not be reflected in our actual scouting, but that's just what I saw. They could hurdle just as fast as any of the shooters given all of the different things that have to take place to hurdle a ball. There PVC mechanism for picking up the ball was very reliable and there drivetrain was flat out FAST and controlled. Even with the arm, they will be very competitive wherever they go.