Quote:
Originally Posted by Team3763 Adam
I see teams at competitions where their code is crisp, clean, and is 99% autonomous. Through the use of cameras and sensors they can target from anywhere, and in autonomous they shoot the frisbees then back up about 4 ft to prepare to go to the loading areas.
Then someone who is rather new, unlike myself, would try to challenge themselves and see if they can truly figure out how to work the camera through this website, the tutorials on LabVIEW and other means of finding out.
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The reason the same teams appear in the eliminations at internationals and at einstein is not because of their software, directly. It is because of their tactics. The robots on einstein might not be the best at what they do, but the robots on the alliance work the best together, does that make sense? You can be pretty certain that 868, 1986, 1114, and 2056 (and many other highly competitive teams the typically win multiple regionals per season) don't just go into design. They analyse the game and decide how they want to play the game, then they design a robot to fit their style of play.
With that, they already know exactly what they want to do in the first week or so. 1986, the powerhouse from missouri, "only" had a floor pick up for the 7 disk autonomous mode. I put only in quotes because they did use it during tele-op, but the 7 disk auton gave them a HUGE advantage right from the start of the match, and the other team had to start behind, which can be very daunting starting a match 30 points behind in the finals of a regional.
The issue you have is no lack of skill, as you have said. It is lack of strategy. It's what separates the good and the great teams. It is very hard to pick up these skills as a team. My team, 1706, has been a team for I believe 8 years now and don't even think of going for extra disks in auton. We added moving backwards after we shot our 3 disks to get us closer to the feeder station to begin our fcs tactic. When we were blocked, we really couldn't do anything. We were tall and slow. 2056 was a fcs and when they were blocked, they'd just cycle. and if a robot didn't follow them to the feeder station, they'd continue being a fcs. This year 2056 and 1114 were unstoppable, winning 3 regionals together, I think I remember hearing that they work together, but I don't know if that has any merit (but they do at least sign up for the same competitions, so...)
It isn't difficult to program making the robot move back 4 feet after auton, or programming your robot to move forward, pick up two disks, repeat, move back and then shoot. Just takes timing of the motors, or vision (which an entirely different aspect of programming).