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Unread 18-02-2015, 20:39
MrJohnston MrJohnston is offline
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FRC #0948 (Newport Robotics Group (NRG))
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Re: How many points will you score?

We set the goal of being able to stack all three yellow totes on the day of kick-off and have kept that as a #1 priority ever since. We added being able to stack recycling containers... Being able to do these two things means:
* We have a very fast lifter.
* We have a very fast acquirer
In fact, if lined up perfectly, we can internally stack six totes in about five seconds... Recycling containers take about three seconds...

So, we should be able to get our 20 pt. autonomous in our first competition just about every match... It's easy enough, then, to pick up our three yellow totes and deposit them on the step right away. If there is one there already from the other alliance, it's easy enough to stack them. We can then be back in the staging area to acquire an RC 15 seconds into tele-op. Six or seven seconds later, we can be loading at the feeder station.... That leaves us more than 1:45 to stack... We can easily stack six totes and an RC in under 30 seconds, so 3 tall stacks shouldn't be hard... Of course, this was all under "ideal" circumstances.

Of course, all this is under ideal situations assuming a few things go well:
* Our autonomous code is about 80% debugged... Saturday our programmers are scheduled to have the practice robot most of the day and should be able clean it up.
* WE are having some struggles with how robust the clips on our lifter is- we've broken several and are trying to strengthen them without losing the necessary flexibility. Our last trial last night securely held four totes and an RC, was a bit too tipsy with a fifth tote and failed with tote number six... We did not have time to test our latest fix last night - but it's part of our 30lbs - so we'll be working on it the next two days as needed.
* Transporting a stack (six+RC) from the loading zone to the scoring platform is easy as is setting the stack on the platform.... Loading is easy as our robot guides totes out of the chute into the stack easily.

Why the narrative? Because we designed to grab and lift quickly from the beginning, scoring over 150 seems plausible. We are not an "elite" team by any means and we have some kinks to work out still, but I think we will be close. So, I can very well see how quite a few teams could be capable of putting up big numbers.... We can be foiled by a few things... We are still working on solutions to deal with sideways totes and currently knock about 30% of them over in autonomous... We can take RC's from the step, but not during autonomous - at this point...

By our week five competition, we hope to have a few "additional" capabilities: We think we can add a device that will let us convert our 20 pt. autonomous to a 28 pointer... It will be easy so long as we use less than 2lbs of material... We'd like to add something that can upright totes - or let us slide the sideways RC's into our lifter... Again, in needs to be light. WE trimmed about five lbs. out of our robot last night to get us down to 117....
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