What won in 2006?

[Aren_Hill]

Well defensive robot is obviously one that's great at disrupting opposing shooters to miss as many as possible.

Human loaded robot is necessary to redeem all the points the other team scores, as each ball is a 3 point difference you need to make up.

Ramp camping is more of a location based attribute that brings variety to the shooting arsenal, making your alliance harder to defend.
1 defensive robot will have a hard time covering someone on the ramp shooting and a perimeter robot.

Floor loading is important to score points essentially for "free" as you have paid no toll for them, these give you a +3 point advantage over the other guys.

Perimeter shooting as stated above just makes your alliance harder to defend.

[gblake]

Watch the Cheesy Poofs during the Aim High Silicon Valley Regional, and notice that they appear to want to lose the autonomous part of the match. That was a wise & clever strategy.

[Molten]

I recall a strategy that hasn't been mentioned yet. Some robots would go up onto the ramp and shoot from there. It was a simple robot that stored alot of balls and parked just in front of the goal. It made it next to impossible to miss once they were up there. I can't recall any team numbers that had this particular robot, but I just remember being surprised when I first saw them. Of all the hair-brained schemes I had, that one never passed my mind.

Jason

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Molten

I recall a strategy that hasn't been mentioned yet. Some robots would go up onto the ramp and shoot from there. It was a simple robot that stored alot of balls and parked just in front of the goal. It made it next to impossible to miss once they were up there. I can't recall any team numbers that had this particular robot, but I just remember being surprised when I first saw them. Of all the hair-brained schemes I had, that one never passed my mind.

Jason

A lot of the good teams were capable of doing this (and also shooting from the floor). It was less a specific strategy, and more a method of scoring points.

[Tetraman]

You know what really won Aim High? Targeting the goal.

Imagine how many top-tier robots of the time wouldn't have been good at all if there wasn't the ability to target that goal. It might have been the one FIRST game where you almost HAD to use the camera system on your shooter. And the robots that were the best could not only snag that target with a camera faster than other robots, but also could keep that camera eye fixed on the farget as they wizzed around on their side of the field and avoided defenders.

Having the ability to hold many of the poof balls and shooting them well was yes a winning combo for a robot, but without the ability to target you were dead reconing your shots.

[Peter Matteson]

1.) Good autonomous shooting. Winning auto was worth a 10 pt bonusand it left the auto losing alliance on offense right away having to collect balls to shoot wasting time while the auto winners could reload while defending.

2.) DEFENSE- control of the ramp and middle of the field while sweeping up balls. The goal was to minimize scoring during the alliaince's individual offense periods.

3.) Ramp bonus at the end. Any 3 robots on your ramp was a 25 point bonus which was substantial. If you were good in the middle of the game you had one of your opponents pinned on the ramp which was legal that year.

[jwfoss]

I may be a bit biased, but 2006 was my favorite year of FIRST as a student.

The value of autonomous can not be understated, but you didn't have to score in the high goal. Running across the field and throwing your opponents off target and stopping them from scoring was just as effective as scoring yourself. Auto-mode was sometimes won by the "guaranteed" dumper robots who scored in the low goals.

This game, as well as 2004 for those of you who remember, made diversification in design the best way to put together an alliance.

Out here on the East Coast at the CT Regional, defensive play won most of the matches. With a lot of designs having high CGs, pushing your opponents up the ramps while they were attempting to shoot often resulted in robots flipped over. Also designs that maximized a robots height allowed you to park in front of shooting robots to block them.

2006 was the year that pushed me to look into always designing for a way to ensure that you will be able to score. For Aim High, these designs include dumping in the corner goals or parking up on the ramp to shoot, which became known as “Ramp Camping”.

[mrmummert]

We won the Nasa/VCU regional that year. We had a good shooter and storage,good auto and a heavy robot that was hard to push, our finals
partners were 1598 and 343. It was built so robust that a couple years
later one of the students drove it off the stage at school and there was
very little damage and it kept running (its since been partly rebuilt to keep it
running for demos) It could also be run by only one student which made it simpler.

We had a auto that could be changed for each match just by turning a switch so the opposing alliance had a hard time countering it. Sometimes we went right out and started shooting...other times it could go forward a little then stop and wait for a opposing alliance robot to come by (with the intention of hitting us) and then move to shooting range and shoot in auto.

On the down side if some one hit us we couldn't shoot at the target
and had to move. Also we lined up in auto using dead reconning since we didn't have time during build to add the camera. Almost all times it worked, but once in a while it didn't. We had to add sights so it was easier for the
students to line it up. If someone got in front of us while shooting they could
block us. Luckly we had a fast shooter.

If I would have added anything it would have been mechanum wheels as it would have made us more manuverable.
While we did great at Nasa/VCU we did'nt do so well at Atlanta and learned the lesson that the winning robots in Atlanta
are in a very different class and we try to aim to built with that in mind.

[Rangel]

I have a question for those back in 2006. Were their any robots that focused on collecting balls and shooting at the same time? Basically a robot that has a rotating and pivoting shooter mechanism with a camera mounted on the shooter. This way the co pilot can aim and shoot with the shooter while at the same time the driver is busy collecting balls.

Thanks

[SM987]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

I have a question for those back in 2006. Were their any robots that focused on collecting balls and shooting at the same time? Basically a robot that has a rotating and pivoting shooter mechanism with a camera mounted on the shooter. This way the co pilot can aim and shoot with the shooter while at the same time the driver is busy collecting balls.

Thanks

987's offering that year is similar to what you describe. There's a few videos on blue alliance. Funny enough, we were teamed up with you guys at CMP in 2006, but I think it was before your time.

Edit- Actually it was in 2008 that we teamed up; I am confusing my years.

[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Rangel(kf7fdb)

I have a question for those back in 2006. Were their any robots that focused on collecting balls and shooting at the same time? Basically a robot that has a rotating and pivoting shooter mechanism with a camera mounted on the shooter. This way the co pilot can aim and shoot with the shooter while at the same time the driver is busy collecting balls.

Thanks

I think the closest a team came to doing this was 111. Maybe some of the guys from WildStang can chime in as I am definitely just recalling this from a foggy memory.

If you think about the logistics of doing what you proposed, it ends up being quite a challenge.

-Brando

[Dave Scheck]

Originally Posted by Brandon Holley

I think the closest a team came to doing this was 111. Maybe some of the guys from WildStang can chime in as I am definitely just recalling this from a foggy memory.

If you think about the logistics of doing what you proposed, it ends up being quite a challenge.

-Brando

We definitely experimented with this early on. The goal wasn't to collect and shoot, but rather escape from a defender and shoot. We mounted a laser pointer to our turret and drove around while the turret tracked the goal using the camera. We found that the system wasn't fast enough to make the shots on the run at driving speed. We thought about adding in some predictive logic, but the turret wasn't fast enough. In the end without extra logic and keeping it relatively simple, it tracked great at longer distances and while sitting still. It worked pretty well when moving slowly and while getting pushed.

In auto we wouldn't shoot unless we were locked on to the light. In driver control, we had an LED stalk that indicated when the turret was locked on. This gave the driver full control.

In terms of trajectory, like many teams we had a hood that rotated to change the angle of the shot. We found that when close to the goal the angle had to be large and it decreased as we moved back. Then at some point the angle had to go up again to make the shots while the ball was coming down. We created a lookup table with the perfect angle at various distances and did a linear interpolation between the points. Using the camera, the robot calculated the distance using trig and adjusted the angle based on the lookup table. It worked pretty well for the most part.

[Grim Tuesday]

Thanks for the help all!

The end result of the session was 'the team' choosing to focus on the side goals, rather than the main one. Everybody felt that it would be too easy to defend the main one, and too hard to reliably score on it. And somehow, they managed to analyze it such that they could score 18 points in each side goal for every six in the top. Beats me.

Don't worry, I set them straight

We watched a video of Einstein that year, and it really does go to show that you have absolutely no idea how the game will end up being played until competition. It was a great lesson for new members; something you can't communicate just by saying 'it doesn't work out the way you think it does sometimes'

Again, thanks.

[Chris is me]

I don't really think giving up on the idea of strategic analysis is a lesson you want to teach your team.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

I don't really think giving up on the idea of strategic analysis is a lesson you want to teach your team.

Who mentioned giving up on it? I thought the lesson was that you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch. Yes, you should analyze the situation. But once you have, it is important to not assume your decision is final. Continue to think about things. Don't take your null hypothesis for granted. That was the lesson to learn. In other words, think things through but be willing to roll with the punches if you didn't figure properly.

Jason