Dumpers?
 

I've seen a lot of talk about shooters. However, I'm wondering if teams are having success with dumpers because right after kickoff there were a lot of threads debating shooters vs. dumpers. I'm sorry if there's already a thread about this please post if there is.

Thank you.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Why can't a team do both? :P

Re: Dumpers?
 

I'm currently working with two teams, one is making a shooter, the other is making a "power dumper"

Re: Dumpers?
 

I would imagine that there are plenty of teams pursuing a dumper that are having some great success - at least with the engineering aspect of it. The big question with a dumper has to do more with game play, however, and ensuring you can get in range and hold the trailer in place long enough to dump. I expect we'll find out how well dumpers really work in a few weeks!

Re: Dumpers?
 

I figure the best shooter will be a pure shooter, and the best dumper will be a pure dumber. Not saying a hybrid can't be good at both, just not the best at both.

Re: Dumpers?
 

our team is doing both. we store the balls in a compartment on the top front half of the robot. One side of this compartment can be raised or lowered by pneumatics while the other half is on a hinge. When we raise the end up we have a door that we can open on the front of the robot to dump the balls. if we lower it then we have the balls running to a shooter in the back of the bot.:yikes:

Re: Dumpers?
 

Our team is having success with a dumper. It is basically a hopper with a rotating base as an agitator.

Re: Dumpers?
 

here is my opinion:
shooters rely on programmers
dummpers rely on drivers
at this point, im pretty sure that whatever a team has decided to build, regardless of how well it will work, will continue with their plan. its too late to turn around and change things up that great.

Re: Dumpers?
 

It's like an X-wing, an A-Wing, and a Y-Wing. The A-Wing (shooter) is fast and has a powerful laser, while the Y-Wing (dumper) delivers a large payload. The X-wing (hybrid) combines both, but can't do either job as well.

Working Star Wars references into everything I can :D

Re: Dumpers?
 

I'm not saying we will change.

Re: Dumpers?
 

I've seen a few videos of dumpers that look like they work great. We're doing a shooter, and I agree that it is a challenge for the programmers

Re: Dumpers?
 

exactly....

Re: Dumpers?
 

our team has had a big discusion about this, and we found pro's and con's about both. dumpers are faster, but a loading system is harder to figure in. a shooter is easier to pick up balls, but it's slower to unload.

Re: Dumpers?
 

team 2115: We started with a dumper design and abandond it because even when we were bumper to bumper the balls rolling out of the hopper did not move far enough horizontally to consistantly get into the trailer.

I have seen two dumpers so far, one with a power assist to speed the balls out of the hopper. Neither worked well but it is early.

We have found our thrower mechanism has a trajectory consistant enough to put a ball the trailer at a 3-4' range.

Mechanically we are fine but as stated befor the challenge is in the programming to aim the thrower

Re: Dumpers?
 

We had some testing time today, and our dumper, which recently turned into a power dumper, was able to get about 75% of the balls we'd picked up into the trailer in 1 dump. The balls that fell on the ground mostly ended up right in front of our robot and we were able to pick them right back up.

I've posted a few pictures on my blog, and have been updating our progress daily.

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.

Re: Dumpers?
 

How does shooting make it harder to program than dumping?

Re: Dumpers?
 

Many people (me included) believe that to be very effective a shooter will need to automatically target opponent's trailers. These trailers will be moving so a shooter will likely need to not only find the trailer, but also figure out how to lead it and shoot were it will be when the ball gets there and not where it is.

You can have an effective dumper that relies on driver skill for positioning, but it will likely be much more difficult to do so with a shooter.

Re: Dumpers?
 

One good thing about dumpers is the way they self-align on impact with the target trailer (not just for aiming, but also for distance). With a wide aspect ratio, you get a 25" wide ball collector opening between the 6" bumper segments. When you make contact with the hexagon shaped trailer (moving or stationary) on this slick surface, the robot and trailer shift to bring everything into proper position and alignment. A "bump & dump" bot that can unload in a second can score almost 100%.

Shooters have the advantage on distance, but they are at the mercy of technology or luck to toss a ball inside a 25" circle.

As for finding stationary robots, have you ever seen an FRC game where robots weren't stuck in traffic jams? Even overdrive had lots of stopped robots.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Team 2915 is building a dumper.

we use a conveyor system in front to pick up balls, then, we use a pneumatic actuator to lift the bottom of our hopper (holds 6 balls) till it tips them out the front of the bot. it easily gets at least 2/3 of the balls in the oposing team's trailer...

basically, we drive up behind another team, and dump... we don't need to stop, as the forward momentum seems to help the balls come out of the hopper (i know, physics say that momentum shouldn't matter, but, in the words of adam savage: "I reject your reality and substitute my own")

we can also drive up to the side of a trailer and get most of the balls in.

the belts also hold an additional 5-6 balls, and are reversible, so that you can eject balls to the human player if needed.

-Z

Re: Dumpers?
 

Our programmers should know the answer to that... they've been madly programming our robot for about 3 weeks now! We're making an attempt at hitting a moving target, and I can confidently say that this is the most technologically complex robot we've ever built (by far!).

If we didn't have programmers working on the automatic aiming turret, I think a dumper would have been the only sensible robot to build. Fortunately we have a lot of programmers this year, and it's turning into a really nifty project.

Re: Dumpers?
 

We're dumping using pneumatics.

We're a bit worried at this time about having a finished robot though...stupid snow days killed us this year.

Pneumatics are killing weight as is our ball conveyor...I'm not too optimistic about this year.

Re: Dumpers?
 

team 342 dumper video

Here is our dumper. The video was taken before fine tuning, but we still got 75% in. We are now at about 85% - 90% getting in the trailer. 2 Jaguars, 1 victor, 1 spike, actually following KISS- priceless:cool:

Re: Dumpers?
 

Our bots would be such good alliance partners....more like twins. :cool:

Great bot. Ours is basically the same, I didn't like the KISS factor of our robot this year because I like machining complex parts plus there weren't many things to build. hehe

Re: Dumpers?
 

Sure, shooters have the potential to be high scorers. But the way I see it, dumping is just so easy and efficient.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Have you tried it with the bumpers on your robot, when you're 3.5" farther out from the trailer?

I agree properly built dumpers, especially those with power assist exiting, can be very effective.

Re: Dumpers?
 

wait, we have to have bumpers:ahh: lol. No, we just put the bumpers on today, I'll have some video of it dumping with the bumpers once I get caught up on homework.

Any others with dumper video?

Re: Dumpers?
 

We're working on a "Power Dumper".
Basically a cross between a dumper and a shooter.

Ah..long range dumper. :)

I'll try to post a video later this week.

Re: Dumpers?
 

I just revised our method.......I had some other people come up with a design, which turned out to be an un-aimable shooter. See as this is also our first year, and we started building this last week, a dumper seems the best choice.

We'll see!

Re: Dumpers?
 

We Finally worked most of the bugs out of our powered dumper. It's able to offload 10 balls in about a second with a maximum range of about 1 foot.

We've codenamed it "The Shumper"

I think Dumpers will have a significant advantage in the number of balls scored in one instance. Our robot for example can hold 20 balls and we can offload them with about 80% accuracy in 3 seconds or less. As long as you have a good driver behind your dumper you'll be a force ot be reckoned with.

Re: Dumpers?
 

I agree^^

Our robot sounds very similar, with a holding capacity of about 18 and the ability to power dump all of them within a few seconds.

Re: Dumpers?
 

It may be that some top alliances will consist of a shooter, a dumper, and an empty cell runner. Opposing alliance robots good at avoiding dumpers may not be able to avoid the shooter, and vice versa. With 100 seconds to run four empty cells, a robot specialized to do that may make the difference for a winning alliance. Expecting three robots to share the empty cell running duty may be asking for too much.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Our robot has the ability to be a dumper but we want strategically to be an empty cell runner. Since the fewest amount of teams are trying or have the provisions on their robot to, we figure we have a semi decent chance of being selected and succeeding in later rounds

Re: Dumpers?
 

My team decided not to have special empty cell running capability because we want to focus on scoring in trailers, so we will be looking for good empty cell running alliance partners. In a pinch, we can pick up empty cells from the floor and shoot them into an airlock, but we figure unless we absolutely have to do that, our time will be better spent scoring in trailers.

Re: Dumpers?
 

Our robot will both carry empty cells and score however, I think we'll be more inclined to score. I guess only the competition will tell what is best.