Re: Dumpers?
 

WE figured that both dumping and shooting would need static trailers( or very slow) and those opportunities would be very small so we might as well dump a whole lot of balls at once even if it's only 75%...
the camera isn't very fast... and we think that with our dumper we can score in motion as well as static.... so all shooters beware of us :D

Re: Dumpers?
 

We're using a "Dumper". It's powered though and has a range of < 1 foot. Where Dumpers are going to shine is in the quantity of balls delivered in a short period. If you're a high capacity (We're 21-24 balls) and a high Speed Dumper (We're ~2.5 sec for 21 balls) you should be able to hang with most of the shooters out there.

Re: Dumpers?
 

We're doing a shooter. We figured it may be difficult in the later rounds to find an opponent that would graciously hold their trailer still long enough to show how good our imaginary dumper could be ;) .

Getting a good idea about how robots and trailers will actually interact in this game is a difficult feat of extrapolation that makes my brain hurt. Does anyone have any video of scrimmages yet?

Re: Dumpers?
 

Who said anything about them graciously holding their trailer still? I expect to see dumpers gang up, bully, and push their opponents into a pinning situation.

I look forward to seeint the Astros shooter and tracking system in action at BAE. Good luck to y'all.

Re: Dumpers?
 

It will be interesting to see the composure of winning alliances and how well alliances can coordinate attacks and defensive maneuvers. This is my first year but my limited exposure to scrimmages (River Rage) and youtube videos for 2008 Overdrive is that it was difficult to recognize much successful alliance coordination. There are so many different potential components of scoring and defense this year, that I expect initially successful strategies will need to change dramatically as opposing teams compute effective countermeasures.

Our strategy sub-team has spent many hours trying to imagine real matches and came up with some ideas about early strategies... It should be great fun to see how many can actually work in only 135 seconds !

Good luck to Wapack and the rest of the teams!

Re: Dumpers?
 

Here's a test of our take on a powered dumper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfgxWW6qvg0#

This uses FP's mated to 2 16:1 Banebots P60 transmissions (so far, so good with those :) ). The test was performed at full voltage.

Re: Dumpers?
 

the one problems with hybrids is reloading as we found out. We don't have a re-loader so we will rely on the people to toss it into the top to resupply it since there is no room to put one in.

Re: Dumpers?
 

maybe i'm wrong but i believe that in Overdrive the alliance coordination wasn't so important as it was in Rack 'N' roll (for example)... so if you look for 2007 matches you will find a huge amount of succesfull alliance coordination... I suggest you to take a look at the blue alliance (www.thebluealliance.net) or soap archive (I can't remember the website)...
there you can find many videos of matches...
I'm already imagining the games in atlanta... it will be great...

Re: Dumpers?
 

a loader can load into the storage tank and have a lid of some sort or be tilted away form the load zone, but yes i agree dump is in the drivers lap and the shooting i assume would be terribly difficult for the programmers

Re: Dumpers?
 

THis year is our school's first year in participation in FRC, and we tried to keep it nice and simple. What we did was we built a ball depository with a 45 degree inclince toward the front of the robot. The dumper is elevated with metal bars above the chassis, and we also have a rotating bar in the front of the hopper with the proper grip to shoot the balls at a distance of maximum 3 feet approx. So in a sense, we might a hybrid launcher with an inclined dump.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Okay... we really, really need to come up with a better term than "dumpers" for these robots, just to help the game commentators.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with saying "Team xxx is taking a shot!" for a shooter... but we really need a better term for robots that get close before they unload on their opponents.

Jason

Re: Dumpers?
 

I agree with that, but dumping.... It sounds great to me ish?

Re: Dumpers?
 

It has been an evolutionary process but it looks like our robot is the " Pukebot 9000 "

We will post pictures in a day or so.

Re: Dumpers?
 

we made a hybrid and it can shoot to about 5-6 ft and it can still make bumper on bumper shots with ease.:cool: but we haven't made it automated yet, :confused:

Re: Dumpers?
 

We had 2 ideas, one that we liked to call the Dr. Seussmobile and the dumper/shooter hybrid. We chose the shooter/dumper hybrid, but got rid of the shooter part because you can't aim well, there is a chance of landing the ball into an allied trailer and it would be really complicated. Our dumper will mainly be supplying the payload specialist with the moon rocks and it would be able to transfer the empty cells safely because of the bucket
Overall, dumpers may be better because if you miss the opponents trailer, there is no chance of accidentaly hitting your allies and you can supply the payload specialist easily.