Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor
If the number of teams who are working on a scaling mechanism is any indicator, 10 points a match are being taken pretty seriously.
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Yes, 10 points are 10 points.... The time investment for those 10 points is going to vary from team to team... Once the robot is fully functional, the programmers are going to need time to program any auto routines and the 2-boulder auto is going to be tricky enough that they will need quite a bit of time with the robot - and might even request that some things be altered mechanically to do it. All the hours invested in doing this will come at a cost of drive team practice.
I'm not saying that it's not worth the time investment - Heck, we are working on it. What I am saying is that there is a cost in time and teams will have to evaluate whether that cost in time is something they can afford when looking at the other needs their team might have.
Regarding the climber: We've put the strong auto routine ahead of the climber for several reasons:
1) We plan to have a very good shooter. If we can manage to put two additional boulders in the tower in the time it would take us to climb (assuming we still challenge), we have overcome the need to climb. We figure that if our partners are both climbing, there should be boulders available. If our partners are still shooting, boulders will still be fed to us... In other words, we see climbing as "nice" but certainly not necessary.
2) Auto routines are done during a totally separate time period. We look at everything we can do during an auto period as "bonus." There is no downside to scoring more autonomous points.
3) Scoring in auto will not require an additional manipulator of any sort - this saves us on cost, construction time, robot space, and the number of things that might need repair later. The code can be tested on our practice bot after bag-and-tag and therefore continually developed.
I've never said that a two-boulder autonomous can't or shouldn't be done - only that it will be difficult and require a significant time investment - at the cost of developing other parts of a team's game. For some teams it will be a good investment. For others (especially for those who don't get it figured out), it may be a poor investment in terms of robot performance. (Of course, that does not account of the potential learning that trying to figure it out will involve...)