Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Now that the robots are snuggled comfortably in their crates I am wondering how many teams gave their robots a separate dedicated Empty Cell handler mechanism? I mean a separate way to collect, store, and deliver the one Empty Cell you are allowed to possess at any one time. I have seen a lot of pictures and video of robots posted and a many have really cool pickup mechanisms to collect the balls from the floor and store in a hopper to be scored. It is hard to tell most of the time if there is a separate “Empty Cell Handler” or if the plan is to just collect them like Moon Rocks.

Does your bot have a separate dedicated “Empty Cell Handler” and why or why not?

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

no, we never though of it lol

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Nope, any balls that we are collecting from the floor will be delivered to our human players, so there is no need to have a separate empty cell handler.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

No, we thought of it but didn't really have the weight. We plan on collecting and dumping when needed.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

well we have a dumper but its not really a container....

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We ditched the original empty cell carrier plan for size reasons, but we have this nice 40lb withholding allowance and several weeks to complete the new design...

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I really want to see a team shoot the balls into the air lock instead of taking the time to drive over and deposit (and then drive back to get another empty cell). I know there are a several teams that have the range to shoot, but I'm not sure about the accuracy. Maybe you could even get the camera to lockon to your human player's colored shirt. I think if a team could do this they can be really sucessful.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

My team has built a pseudo empty cell handling system, it holds a said empty cell in the front of the robot, over the collection mechanism, and when we want to eject it, we need to drive the collection mechanism reverse, forward, then reverse and it shoots right out into the airlock. Now the last challenge, convince my team to attempt to collect the empty cell in autonomous. (legal?)

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Yup! I've been really surprised at the lack of Empty Cell carriers. Even if you're down 14 Moon Rocks, two well placed Super Cells can save the day. They'll be huge, especially in the elimination matches.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Team 558 has a function to store empty cells at the bottom of our belt system and direct them right into the airlock. We will even have a light telling alliance partners to give us those empty cells!

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

1458 has a backup plan for empty cells concerning how vital their roll is in the game. unfortunatly our weekend practice turned out not to be enough of an example for us to decide if super cells were important. Our hopper sides are a netting material, so adding empty cell ability would be as simple as adding a bal sized hole in the side of our hopper at the height of the hole.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

1319 has a dedicated empty cell carrier, for anyone that may have seen the robot it was left off puposefully for the scrimmage, because we didn't want to give too much away. Although this method still only had a certain degree of success. We think it will help us greatly.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

The pneumatic cylinders we decided to use for them didn't end up arriving until ship day :(. But (if there is weight) team 2506 will have two, one on each side depending on which way we are coming from (we know you can only hold one at a time).

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I am very surprised many teams do not have this as well. 121 does have such a device.

I envision some team's may become SCSs (Super Cell Specialists), teams that can effectively get empty cells to human players and score super cells, and will seed high. These teams may not be the best at scoring rocks but may be a nice addition to an alliance.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Yes, Team 904 has a separate servo driven mechanism to securely transport an empty cell.

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.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I finally thought of the empty-cell strategy about half way through build season, but it was too late to implement by then. The coolest way to do it in my mind would be to build a robot with two catapults on it constructed so that, when the robot is right up against the outpost wall, empty cells can be dropped on top and instantly fired into each of the airlocks across field. 4 super cells in 4 seconds, unless you get bumped/mess up.

It's a bold strategy that sure would look cool; I wonder how many teams will manage to do it (or even try?)

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

? :rolleyes:

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We have one. No one on my team wanted to do it at first, but being the lead build mentor I pushed for it and refused to back down from this one little system. My reasoning was something along the lines of "bots on Einstein will have one!".

At first it was going to be a long trough on the side of the bot, which wound up being to volumous to implement. We then integrated it in with our shooter design, which is a suspended turret.

All we have to do is drive as fast as possible, ram into the outpost, get the empty cell on our shooter ramp, reverse the shooter to back it up, then rev up the shooter, open the gate, and shoot the empty cell into the air lock when we're within 10 feet of it. We'll need some practice to get a shot off like that, but I expect that we'll be good at it by the time our 2nd regional rolls around.

We're really glad that I can be stubborn sometimes :cool:

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

If I could keep track of the number of times we've used that logic to drive decisions...

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Team 1141 has a designated EC system. It is located at the front of the robot just below the front of our hopper. It is just below the same height as the hole on the outpost so all the human player has to do is just push it through the wall(without putting their hand through the wall of course) and the robot sucks it in using a spinning roller. The roller is a similar design to the system that releases the balls from our hopper. we originally were going to use the ground pick up to capture and dump the EC but we felt that we would be passing by too many free MR on the floor on our way to the airlock. once at the airlock we just reverse the roller and it shoots the EC out from about 2-4 feet away.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I've been trying to get my team to do that too. And I studied the rules carefully. It is legal, just be careful to make sure the tongs don't get stuck in the robot before it starts to drive again. However, no one listened to me. O and our empty cell holder is our pick up mechanism. They can be delivered in the side and by reversing we eject it to the air lock.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

1557 has one, its just a servo and some signboard

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

What tongs? The outpost doesn't have any.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Team 894 has a seperate rotary pneumatic mechanism dedicated solely for the purpose of retrieving empty cells.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

Team 894 has a seperate rotary pneumatic mechanism dedicated solely for the purpose of retrieving empty cells.

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

I tried to get my kids to think about this design also. They felt the Risk/Reward was too great. Instead we settled for a EC device on 424 (the robot on the right)

Re: Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?
 

We Don't have a dedicated Empty Cell "mechanism", but we do have two ways of getting an Empty Cell. To pick up an empty cell from the floor we just drive up to it, spin our roller slowly and then it gets wedged between the roller and a piece of polycarb, To offload it we just reverse the roller and the Empty Cell is ejected about 5 feet.

Or, we drive up the the outpost shield and the HP can put an Empty Cell directly into our conveyor system.