Who is picking up from ground?

[sanddrag]

If you are, do you have to sacrifice something else?

[Squirrelrock]

no sacrifices involved - everything works together.

the picker-upper-er is sorta like 33's design from two years ago (VCU and other comps), in that it should be able to regurgitate the balls back onto the floor... hopefully.

[Billfred]

1293 has a similar arrangement--no trade-offs that I'm aware of. We have, however, had to fiddle with designs to get everything we really want.

[Koko Ed]

We have a lift.
I can't see how teams can operate without some method of retriving balls from the ground.

[David Hoff]

The only sacrifice I can could think of with a ball intake is weight and space. However, the intake can be a small mechanism and the benefits far outweigh those few pounds and few cubic feet of space.

[Rick TYler]

After four weeks of intense noodling, about eight hours on Rhino, and four prototypes in plywood, my son and I have developed a completely integrated floor sweeper, hopper, loader and shooter system that is 18 inches wide and about 48 inches high. Of course, our team isn't using it on Top Gun, but that's the way things go. Oh, well...

[Barry Bonzack]

1604: picking up, hoarding and spitting them out into corner goals. Sacrifice shooting, but are able to hold many. Can also load from the human player shooting them into the robot.

1390: Picking up, holding max of 10, and shooting them. Possibility of spitting them into corner...maybe. Human player will shoot balls in front of robot to pick them up, or possibly help out alliance bots (or hand balls to alliance partners).

[FTtyler]

there are some more sacrifices. with a loader-type-thingie, you are now top heavy, you lose mobility, and you lose some time trying to wait for the balls to go into the top of the robot.

[Marcel]

Yea we had to sacrifice our design of having a shooter for our harvester not enough space for it.

[ctshirk7]

we are picking from the ground and dropping them into our other mechanisms... the only thing is we havent yet found a way to get them back out... we'll find a way

[sciencenerd]

Originally Posted by FTtyler

there are some more sacrifices. with a loader-type-thingie, you are now top heavy, you lose mobility, and you lose some time trying to wait for the balls to go into the top of the robot.

Not necessarily. Who says a loader has to bring the balls all the way to the top of the robot?

Our robot is going to have a picker-upper. The only thing we haven't got CADded yet is a way to channel balls to the center of the robot, where they are picked up.

[bobotics319]

Are Team is using human players...

[Jared Russell]

I don't understand why so many people think picking up from the ground is indispensible...

Two years ago, balls flooded the floor when the hopper opened. Four years ago, 40 balls started in a straight line on the ground. This year, NO balls start on the ground, and the only way they get there is if YOU put them there (whether by missing a shot or throwing them).

We found that with our drive, we can go back and load up far quicker than it would take to mow down 5-10 stray balls. If every ball our human player gets his hands on ends up in our hopper, and every one of those ends up in the 3 point goal, it is mathematically impossible to beat us with balls alone. Granted, you're going to miss a couple here and there, but allocating the space, weight, and time to a mechanism that really only has to deal with these stragglers doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

If your strategy is to wing the balls down the field to be picked up by your robot, you have three opponents who would just love to get them first...

I'm not saying that this is how the game is necessarily going to be played out, but I forsee a game where human loading and a precision shooter will be hard to beat.

[Marcel]

We've made a mechanism to pick up the balls and bring them inside the robot and we can "regurgitate" them back out whenever we want.

[DjAlamose]

There was no sacrifice when we designed our robot. The robot is designed with continuous feed in mind. The balls are picked up off the floor and placed in a hopper than runs the entire back portion of the robot. The same conveyor used to place balls into the hopper is used to feed the shooter so they can also go directly to the shooter. And that’s not all! That same conveyor is also used to feed the balls from out of the hopper and up to the shooter. This meant a lot less conveyors and a lot less weight in belting.