[rswsmay]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Ok this is great and all, but what did you you learn about the dynamics of the game? Not to whine, but this thread has gotten a bit of topic, and us teams who weren't able to make it to a practice scrimish would really like some insight into things.

How big of a hazard were the small balls?
How did autonomous go?
How much contact was there?
What strategies were sucessful?
What strategies weren't?
Was hanging big?
How important were the smalls balls and the big balls?
What sorts of mehcanisms proved effective and inneffective?
What were the common characteristics of high scorign robots?
What were the biggest challenges for most bots?
How important was speed? Torque? Control?
Were alot of people able to get up the ramp?
.......... etc, etc, etc.....

Well we attended the Peachtree regional at SciTrek this past Saturday. We along with the majority of teams there had their share of mechanical problems, but we thought it well worth the trip out to see our defiencies on a playing field.

1. Small balls were no hazard.... not sure what hazards you might be thinking of other that maybe excessive bouncing around the field or maybe a bot running over one.

2. The scrimmage was not setup to replicate the conditions conducive to good autonomous operation, but several teams did take a stab at it. I don't believe anyone was able to effectively track the line, or IR beacon.

3. As it turned out, there wasn't very much contact for the bots that made it to the field. Most ended up concentrationg on doing their own thing. The majority of contact was made between bots and walls, bots and platforms, bots and the floor, bots and mobile goals, etc.

4. I believe that the key question is which bots were successful in their strategy, as a consequence of a good design and implementation. There were some that were built primarily to herd the balls, others that went straight for the bar, one that focused on manipulating the 2X ball, and one that was very good at grabbing the mobile goal and ball herding. All could be effective given the complexity and dynamics of the game.

5. The converse holds true for ineffective strategies. For us, we never got a fully trial of our strategy since we were one amongs the many that had mechanical problems. We did manage one scrimmage round where we fielded 4 of the 10 pt balls. However our competitors managed 1 of the 10 pt balls plus hung from the bar for 60 points. It will pay to scout out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents to be flexible in your competitions strategy.

6. Out of the approx 8 bots there, about 3 had mechanisms to do bar hanging, but only one did it at all and did it more than once.

7. Big balls are only as effective as the small balls in the goal. 2x ball times zero small balls is still zero.

8. For us our 4 wheel drive train was modified when we returned from the scrimmage. Too much side friction to over come, so we have the pneumatic tires for drive on the rear and casters on the front now. (All that wasted time ). One team had similar problems with treads, the side friction was causing their treads to disengage. I was surprised to NOT see an effective ball hearding design, including ours. It was good to see however that the use of pneumatics was good for most teams.

9. Too few functional bots at the time and too few scrimmage sessions to make the determination as to common characteristics of high scoring bots.

10. Biggest challenge was manuvering/negoating the field to get up on the platform, or grab the mobile goal, or herd those rubbery/bouncy balls to the corral.

11. A good balance of speed and torque is always good. Of course if your goal is to heard the 10 pt balls, you can't do that with too much speed. They go all over the place. I would give up some speed and torque to get better control for our strategy.

12. Ramp...? What ramp...LOL. No need to get up the platform unless you plan to hang from the bar, or block another bot from hanging from the bar. I guess if a 10 pt ball ended up there you could be going after that, but most remained on the main playing field since their strategy required that.

Hope that helps...... We missed you guys at the regional. See ya on the 18th - 20th.