1714's been playing with our robot a lot at demos and stuff, and we're making some changes for IRI. Since we're such a highly anticipated team and all
But we have a little of a dilemma.
We have a Long Range Mode now for firing the Empty Cell 6 feet away, so we don't leave ourselves vulnerable for a pin by slamming against the Fueling Station. (We could take off a transmission on a CIM and go 12, but then we overshoot on dumps)
Removing the camera will let us hold 1-2 more balls, so we're doing that as like many other teams we never actually used it. We now have a human loading autonomous bringing us from an initial load of 7 balls to 12, and it's fast enough that we can sometimes snag and hold a robot down with it (and hey, balls in the trailer of the opponent by the HP are just as many points as if they were in our robot, right?).
The tricky part for us is figuring out how to increase the capacity of our robot even further, in under 6 pounds. The rough idea being thrown around was to make the front "diverter" bay wider, but to do that we'd have to use another motor to make a magic ball unjammer (not too big a deal if we can design it) and cut off signatures by Dean Kamen and Woodie Flowers (much bigger deal, but at least Dave Lavery's is safe!
).
What changes are you expecting to see robots make at IRI? What are you making? and do you have any advice for us if you know our robot? (personally I bet more than half the teams will autoload)