Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard
Can I ask how you decided what locations on the field to shoot from? While most teams selected either the batter or the Outer Works as their primary shooting location for protection, you tended to set from a variety of unorthodox locations in addition to some of the more common ones.
I'd love to hear the thought process that went into deciding those, or did those come after the robot was already functioning?
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After analyzing the game during the first weekend of build, we realized that there was only one protected zone - the outerworks. We also realized that shooting from the outerworks would be tough to do if we wanted to maintain a 95%+ accuracy rate which we set as one of our criteria. Therefore, we ensured that we had a multitude of locations to shoot from regardless of any defence being played.
Our primary shot requirement was the batter shot and the just off batter shot, where we would sit off the batter and shoot. We felt that this shot should be our primary shot because we would be closer to the goal, thus also increasing the accuracy of the shot.
Our secondary requirement was to ensure we could shoot from where we liked to call the "spy" box. It was in the far left corner of the courtyard where we could press up against both the side rail and opponent wall to shoot from. We did not use this shot come competition much but we felt like this shot would be slightly more accurate than the outerworks shot because we could not be moved once in that location and it was slightly closer than the outerworks.
Finally, our third requirement was to shoot from the outerworks. This was the last requirement because its distance to the goal was the farthest (and subsequently the hardest to nail).
Combining these shot ranges, we realized this allowed us to shoot from nearly anywhere on the field after doing some calculations and building the prototype. To ensure a higher degree of accuracy we designed a fixed shooter angle with only speed as the varying quantity. Our "diamond plate" shot became our most effective, but in reality it was the same as the just off batter shot. The turret just helped adjust for the angle difference.
TLDR: Shot locations were decided based on accuracy (the farther the shot location, the less accurate the shot would be). In addition, the turret helped increase our shot range.