A couple comments on pick-up. From what we experienced and saw between arms & shooters, pick-up probably made the biggest difference between the good and best hurdlers, particularly being able to pick-up in traffic
and from the #1 driver station looking through the reflection/glare from the divider.
At MWR, the divider reflection was very challenging- (our base driver who had never driven, or even been to an event before for that matter) initially had a lot of trouble losing sight of the robot. Eventually she settled in and we talked her in but having a claw gripper made it tougher than we would have liked. Whereas the roller feeder robots could just slam into the general area and more easily drive towards the ball and either grab it or drive it to where it could be seen and then grabbed & hurdled. During elims we had a lot of front row opportunities to watch 1114 do this handling very-very effectively. (Great job guys!!)
Before you can hurdle or place the ball, you have to be able to get the ball!! We're be looking at possibly upgrading or revising our gripper prior to West Michigan.
Regarding our arm. We were happy it performed as well as it did, but agreed it needs to be faster- we used the van door motor for the arm and globe for the wrist- Making the 180 deg. swing front & back took more time than we liked and required more anticipation on the arm drivers part to be ready to grab, but again it functioned when needed and we saw a lot of teams successfully using the VDM on their arms.
The wrist was another story though. The globe motor was fine until it got hot, it took a while for us to figure this out very late Friday by then it was too late to do much about it besides replace it and plan for the next event. We'd do fine the first couple matches and practice (we actually made it out for practice match #1- a big accomplishment for us, especially at the 1st event of the season
) but then as the pace picked up the performance was sketchy and we couldn't figure out what happened until it finally outright failed.
On Elevators, (btw: Wildstang, 1504 and one of the Winners- sorry I forget their name right now, were Elevator robots as was Team #33 I believe.) The biggest challenges we saw were them getting caught up on the overpass, and in many cases high CG tipping when loaded with a raised ball in traffic, or again hitting the over pass, hanging up or close-lined. Also, air consumption of larger cylinders used on some robots often meant that tactical adjustments had to be made to allow for recharging the air systems between hurdle attempts. All of which were manageable and less of a challenge as the event went on.
As always though, it comes down to robot capability, field tactics, and simple execution out there, especially in the elims. Every type of robot can play this game and play it well once they align their tactics and strategy with their capabilities and execute their plan.
Biggest word of advice to all teams: Watch the penalties!! With all the action going on especially when chasing hurdled balls in traffic jams, the refs can't always tell if you broke a plan on purpose or were pushed so for consistency it seems they typically hit you anytime the robot broke a plane- unless it was very obvious.