Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

The Robonauts have a dedicated storage area and ejector mechanism only used for empty cells.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We can pick up the empty cell with our primary scoring system and cycle it through to send it our to the PS.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

There were a few hidden mechanisms on our robot when I posted the render of Team 228's robot, which were also kept off the robot for the Suffield Scrimmage. Could there be a dedicated empty cell handler? Will our drive-by maneuver make a come back on 2009?

I guess you'll have to wait for the Connecticut Regional to find out. ;-)

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

yeah we have a little arm thingy : ]

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

we have a servo connected to a "hook" that can pick up an empty cell on driveby if the human player just barely sticks it through the hole. the hook then rotates to drop the ball, which bounces off the bumpers into the loading dock.

pretty neat, though ive never seen them use it. they mostly just have the payload specialist drop the ball onto the floor and just sweep it up.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Killraine, I'm not picking on you, just using your post as the first example I saw to illustrate my logic below.

Early on in our design process we ruled out a typical conveyor type ball harvester because it is indiscriminant and we felt it could be more of a liability than an asset. (Well that was one of the reasons anyway.) We were worried that the color difference between the Moon Rocks and Empty Cells was hard to see and the Empty Cells on the floor would effectively become “land mines” after the first one was harvested. Suck up one and you are ok but suck up a second one and bang 10-point penalty. I am seeing a lot of conveyor type ball harvesters but I am just not understanding how teams are going to separate the Moon Rocks from the Empty Cells within their robots and then once they have one Empty Cell in their robot how are they going to make sure they don’t suck up another one. It was clarified in one of the early team updates that an opposing alliance can’t throw an Empty Cell directly into the open top hopper of an opposing robot to cause a penalty. However, there has been nothing stated that an opposing robot or human player can’t push/shove/throw/etc. an Empty Cell in front of an opposing robot’s floor ball collector and if you suck it up while already possessing one that’s your fault. Once that Empty Cell hits the floor it doesn’t belong to either alliance and is in fair play. I guess I am surprised to see all of the typical ball collector conveyor systems this year given the existence of Empty Cell “land mines” on the field. I was also expecting more specialized Empty Cell handlers.

How are all of you teams that have nifty conveyor belt type pickup from the floor ball collector thingies planning to avoid <G24-A> penalties?

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I think empty cells (ECs) will be a scarce resource, and if there are any loose ones on the floor, robots will fight over them, so the risk of penalties is low. A specialized EC delivery mechanism is necessary for robots that perform that function precisely because trying to herd them will be risky--opposing robots will try to steal them from the herder. If the floor collector intake is designed right, it's possible for those robots to collect the ECs without risk of having them stolen by facing the collector to the wall and having the Outpost Payload Specialist drop the EC right into the floor collector.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Our storage space is partially netting so it can be handed through there or can be dropped in front of the robot pulled in slightly and spit back out

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We will be using our main intake to transport empty cells if strategy dictates. We are not really worried about the "land mines" as we believe that very few if any empty cells will become freely available on the floor.

Once in possession of an empty cell we will likely be shutting our conveyor off and moving to directly drop it off to one of our Airlock/Fueling Ports which should avoid most <G24-A> penalties.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

"If the floor collector intake is designed right, it's possible for those robots to collect the ECs without risk of having them stolen by facing the collector to the wall and having the Outpost Payload Specialist drop the EC right into the floor collector."

We swerve/crab in to pick up the empty cell... it will fall directly in front of our robot.. we move forward to pick it up...trapping it against the wall if need be... then we turn off the collector when we have the empty cell and then strafe to move away...or back up or move whatever way is good.

If there is no traffic...(as if that would ever happen..) we could pick it up moving parallel to the side wall...

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We've got a dedicated empty cell handler. We drive up to the outpost, the PS drops it on the floor, and the roller at the bottom sucks it up. We have to tweak the area behind the roller with a bit o' inclined polycarb to help keep the cell up off the ground a bit and keep it snug against the roller during transport. Once we add that in Cleveland, we expect to be able to do this, but even better.

We also expect to spin that roller at full speed in eject mode (RS-545 with a 16:1 Banebots P60 = purty fast) a great deal of the match as we're driving around, especially when we're pointed toward our corner PS stations. Since we can't pick up off the ground, we figured we might as well make it a headache for those who can by scattering the orbit balls to the winds. Fun times.

Conversely, the same mechanism could also theoretically be used to pass the balls to floor collecting partners. It'll be fun exploring our capabilities next week. :-)

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

our robot accidentally turned into one giant empty cell handler... lol... all for the lols...jk. weve got a piston shooter on a rotating turret fed from the top but can also be muzzle loaded with a empty cell.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

The Robovikes have 2 "Hooks of Doom"...

http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...n/dsc08991.JPG

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Some good empty cell runners may find themselves picked to some winning alliances. There are 100 seconds available in teleoperated period before the PSs can start tossing super cells, and an attack bot just doesn't have time to go running empty cells too.

There are four empty cells per alliance, and three robots. It will be pushing it, but there's time for one specialist EC runner bot to run all four empty cells.

My main worry, since we built an attack bot, is that there won't be enough good EC runners to go around, and the top seeds might pick them in the first round!

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

The strategy that drove our robot design is securey delivering ECs to airlocks from the outpost. In autonomous we'll head toward our outpost and be ready to pick up an EC. Then in teleoperated we'll head to the airlock to offload. W'll repeat the sequence as long as needed. Our mechanism is a chute and small helix that enables us to very effectively pick balls off the floor one-at-time. The helix is capped by a high angle shooter designed to launch balls into the airlock. We can also collect regular balls off the floor to deliver to the PS to shoot if there are no ECs available. We can collect and store 7 balls before off loading them. Our robot performed well during scrimmage and our PS was able to score SCs during the last 20 seconds quite often.