Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Moving forward, we will simply realize the talent we have and try to reorganize where appropriate. Case study from lessons learned:
With a Mecanum setup, kickers on 2 sides seemed like a great idea...

• A power kicker facing backwards would allow the driver to maintain a 'facing away' orientation when in the far field. The idea here was to keep the driver's natural tendencies natural (i.e. not 'flip' turn directions when facing the wrong way) while far across the field. This theoretically would have allowed us to line up faster. This kicker never made it to full fruition due to a week of snow.
• A medium kicker that allowed us to play midfield or close field. This one was successful.
• The trade-off was to forgo hanging.
• (side note) Karthik probably would not have approved since we were planning to play all 3 zones. Coincidentally with DC being a Week 1 regional in 2010 and a variety of skill-leveled teams in attendance, we wound up having to play all 3 zones. I only mention that because a student mentioned it to me in Atlanta.

With a Mecanum setup, side rollers for the balls on the wall also seemed very viable; coincidentally that would have been unique and allowed us to easily win DC.

• The 5th Gear Simulation revealed that most balls wound up along a wall. Early in competition we found that those that barely missed the goal would roll out directly in front of the goal; if they were not hit just right, usually they'd end up on the side wall.
• The choice was made to handle balls on the wall.
• A side roller that ran the length of the robot side could be strafed up to and run in the direction of the goal.
• The difference was poor execution because our best builders were either on FTC (new to the team) or on Build 2 (parents of new kids) with the field elements, bumpers, and general build supervision.

The strategy and direction was solid; we missed the boat though.

Moving forward, more individual components need to be simulated: especially any complex ones. Naturally-articulated drive seemed like a great idea, but also caused some headache due to its tendency to pop up the front of the robot when accelerating. It wasn't the worst decision or outcome, but I wonder what things would have been like with a rigid pneumatic-wheel drive.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Strategy wise, I never bought it when teams claimed they didn't hang because scoring 2 points in 20 seconds was "easy". For one, hang time can be shortened (1114 and 254 are great examples of sub 5 second hangs) or nullified entirely (buzzer beating lifts from 67 or 1625). So it might not even take the full 20 seconds. Secondly, many people I talked to claiming this didn't really have data on how well their own robot would score points. It just "looked easy".

That being said, my team wasted a lot of effort on hanging that we could have spent playing the ball game well, and that's ultimately more important than hanging this year. If you can't score any balls at all, you're a liability no matter how repeatable your hangs are and how good your defense is. Not kicking in auto lost a lot of teams games.

What IKE touched on is a good reason why seemingly average teams like 230 were so successful this year. They called the game very well, prioritizing on accurate autonomus shots, a reliable hang, and a few other points in between. They made 2-3 in auto, kicked a few easy points over the bumps in the midzone, and hung. They won WPI without any kind of ball magnet and played well into the eliminations at CT and Championship. 230's a good model for doing exactly as much as you need and no more.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

We likely would have made our hanger faster and would have powered it with gas springs.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Each team has to judge their own build capability during the build season. Ask yourself, who are you to make the call for them when they decide that it is indeed easier with their tools to try to improve their kicker rather than construct an entirely new mechanism for 2 points, so long as the points get scored?

Case and Point:
Capability is coupled deep into strategy, even in a commercial market. Can every flat tablet be an iPad, with its ground-breaking features in some areas and shortcomings in other? No. But other companies in the market have tablets that have similar features, have less DRM, are cheaper, and have a less-aggressive marketing campaign. In the tablet market, iPad may be a pop culture superstar, but it gets major fail-points for getting any real work done due to its DRM (also known as iTunes), lack of keyboard, and lack of compatibility with common everyday devices. So for companies entering the market who play to their own strengths rather than Apple's, they may find that they have a superior product to a niche and are able to make money just fine. Those who enter the market and try to directly compete with Apple are at high risk for failure: getting past the marketing may only lead to intellectual property barriers.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Pay closer attention to the differences between the "Real" field elements and the "Low Cost/Team" Field elements. We built our tower using 4x4 posts for legs and spent the next six weeks figuring out how to reach the horizontal bar at the top. We removed our useless hanging device before our first match. Had we been staring at a tower with the true vertical pole (or at least thought about it), perhaps we would have come up with the superior solution (curl) to the "true" problem, which was getting above the platform, not reaching for a bar.

We learned a general design rule for future reference (regardless of the game): If a task needs to be accomplished only once during the match and doesn't need to be reversed, consider stored energy as the power source.

Good thread, but perhaps it should differentiate between "If we knew then what we know now" answers and "Considering the information that was available at the time, how could we have made better choices, and how can we do better in 2011?"

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Sidebar: The practice field instructions FIRST gave for a cheap version tower were atrocious. The 4X4 posts they recommended were not a correct substitute for that situation.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Overall we were pretty pleased with our robot. We had an excellent hanger (altough it took us probably 7 or 8 seconds to hang minimum.) We could cross the bump easily at any speed. We often scored two balls from the far zone in autonomous.

I think our biggest weakness was the ball roller. I think we were contacting too high on the ball which made the downward force too high.

Another potential improvement is that we didn't change anything on the robot from the time we bagged. We won KC, had a narrow loss in the finals at 10,000 lakes and a narrow loss in the quarterfinals on Newton. All this with the robot exactly as bagged (except of maintenance) at the end of the build season. Had we worked on the ball roller during the competion season we likely could have done a bit better. I'm on the fence about this. I like calling the robot done on the last day of the build season and then seeing how our decisions work out - a bit sentimental maybe.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Well for the past 3 years, 548 has worried too much about drive trains and forgone the actual game piece manipulation. Make a long story short, we made around 8 drive trains during the season, yes, we successfully built a new one each week with 2 in week one, and modified the competition one before states. With so much work put on the drive train, after 6 weeks of build, we had a linear kicker that was never tested, 2 hangers that didn't work, and no ball possessor. This resulted in copying a ball possessor from HOT team and our kicker breaking for our first full day of competition. Lucky for us our robot found a home in the near zone and played very well there, even though it was poorly designed for the mid zone. So with our team not having our final drive train till 10 weeks after the game announced, I'm wondering when other teams decide on the exact drive train they are going to use, I'm hoping next year to get it done by week one.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I wouldn't have bothered with the kicking mechanism on our robot, or all the associated pneumatics, and would have focused on the ball herding strategy, which worked out pretty well for us. I would have used that extra time on improving the drivetrain, because getting around defense was a big problem of ours throughout the season.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Nothing.:)
and I hope they continue to look at a ranking/scoring system that was used this past year. Makes the ranking interesting til the very end.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I don't think I would have built a redirection bot, simply because that takes control of the game out of your hands and into your alliance partners' hands. No thank you. Sure it worked out for 469, but they did compete at regionals where there was plenty of competence.

I would have made my opinions heard much much more, and pursued a 6/8WD robot more, and probably thought about the bump a little less. I didn't see too many teams clogging up the tunnels all year.

I wouldn't have changed our ball control idea or kicker. Our application of our ball control was poor at best to me, but it did have great potential. A sturdier attachment system, and being used on a drive base that didn't draw 40 amps of current to turn would have been just fine. Our kicker was great after Pittsburgh, I wouldn't have changed a thing on that regard.

-Nick

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Definitely would take a redirecting robot idea seriously. It was brought up in a design session and quickly dismissed.

I also would have liked to have seen our team pursue a ball magnet and proper latch system for our kicker earlier instead of a double kicker.

That being said, 2010 was definitely the most enjoyable season so far!

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

I would have bought a bigger box of popcorn and sat up higher in the stands. In the middle.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

For the most part, I was very satisfied with our robot's performance this year. Certain things could have gone our way (Week 1 suspension), or been done better (ball possessor).

However, there was one robot idea I had that would have been epic cool. Essentially, it would have looked a lot like 71's 'bot this year, with 2007-style ramps. The main point of the robot is facilitating suspensions, even without alliance partners that elevate. The robot unfolds the ramps, alliance members climb on, and the robot hooks to the tower and pulls all three robots up off the ground and over the platform.

Now, to note, that really would not have been a great robot. But that fact is it would score 8 points in the last about 20-30 seconds (with setting up time). That would have won most regionals across the country, though would not have been as good in Michigan or the CMP.

One concern would be getting enough power, but if at hooking, drive motors were transferred to hanging power, it could be done at a reasonable speed. This would be especially compatible with a spring-out hanger such as 2619, 201, or especially 2959.

Though having said all that, i still think our robot is better.

Re: If you could Breakaway all over again...
 

Very few things I would change. Our head guy insisted we spend the first 2 meetings after kickoff talking about the game and planning strategy and not talking about the robot. This led to our priorities being speed and agility, being able to play any section, change sections and having a strong kicker, with hanging being a lower priority. I must disagree with previous posts as our mecanum wheels were one of our best assets and our drivers made good use of them. Although some teams had awesome hangers I saw many waste the last 30 or 40 seconds trying to set up, so I am not too disappointed we did not get ours working.

My biggest lessons as a first year electrical mentor are to plan the wiring very early so you can get what you need instead of using what you can get quick, and having the wires to the 4 wheel motors the same length (I have not yet been able to test if it makes a difference in how easy the robot is to drive straight).