Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Here's an idea I got at a graduation party over the weekend. They started a game a beach volleyball, only the ball was about the size of a yoga ball. It made me think of last year's robot. Do you think we could modify last year's bot with the new controller to seek the ball and then interact in a volleyball game?

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

I'm not sure.

From what I've seen of last year's robots, most weren't designed to catch anything. It'd take a looot of reworking to make it possible, for a lot of teams.

Though I'm quite sure we'll see a "volley-ball" game in FIRST sometime soon :). Probably with smaller balls

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Have you checked out the new VEX game?

http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex-clean-sweep.shtml

Almost a volleyball game...

Jason

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

I wasn't talking true volleyball. We didn't really have any rules besides knocking the ball back and forth. I just thought it might be interesting to teach the robot to track one of the large balls and throw it either to someone or back over the net. Maybe an all robot game...

just something to think about more than an actual competition

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

I would be an interesting concept, but I am not sure how well that would go. While some robots hurdle trackballs over like no-ones business, most robots ive seen take a while to hurdle a ball. This will result in a pretty slow game. I guess editing is a must. I would like to see how this comes along. Send some picture when/if you decide to have a match.
:)

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

During the beta test, we were able to make our 2008 robot track and pick up a slowly moving ball on the ground. Trying to do the same thing faster, and in 3d would be a lot harder.

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Yeah, the only teams that immediatly come to mind as possibly being able to catch something and then "throw" it are 16, 118, 254, 968, and possibly 1024. I'm sure there's more, but an arm that was not really suited to catch and then throw something seemed to be the more popular design last year.

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

<Unrelated Advice> Playing volleyball with trackballs can be painful</Unrelated>

Change 2008's robots to play volleyball with trackballs would be interesting, I would say only shooters would really be able to do it. The real issue is tracking the balls, I don't think that our current hardware can do this in real time, perhaps instead of volleying we make the robots hit a target with the large balls OVER a net, similar concept to volleyball but eliminates the need for vision processing of a moving object in 3-d

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Hehe 2081's 08 bot could prolly play volleyball pretty well if we slapped on mechanum wheels

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

I think that making a robot that can "play" in the sand ought to be rather challenging! :yikes:

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Actually i think this would be an awesome game for a future year.

Game field split right down the middle with a wall. Robots with various appendages to move the ball. Alliance gets a point when ball hits ground on opponents side of field. First 30 seconds autonomous (insert evil laugh), next 2 minutes player controlled. During the first 30 seconds points scored during the autonomous period are doubled (if you scored 3 alliance gets 6, if you scored 4 alliance gets 8). Simple easy to follow that game would rock (not for the builders god that would be hard). And ball cannot be in contact with a robot for more then umm say 2 seconds. And they could put on that horrible frp* to make it worse.


*Let the record show that i did not like the frp or the game, but i liked the idea behind the game.

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

this also goes for kickball

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

What about a robot playing Super Pong. Two robots in zones 2 feet off of the wall, and fire the balls back and forth at each other. If a ball hits your wall, the other team scores. Playing that with the Trackballs would be great fun!

2D would be easier to track, and "might" slow the approach. There are actually a couple of ways that the 2D could probably go faster than throwing it.....

Re: Robotic Beach Volleyball?
 

Clean Sweep is an evil, evil game. Karthik and company are just plain mean. It violates too any of my hidden assumptions about robot games, and now Jason has to complicate things further. We have already (of course) considered net-tending designs, but now we need we'll need to think about robots that can dive, dig, set, and spike. Thanks, Jason. :)