Best Feeder Bot of 2012

[XaulZan11]

I saw literally one match from IRI, but what made 125 so great at IRI? They were good on Galileo but was not selected for eliminations (I do think they were one of the best teams not picked). Did they make any significant robot or strategy changes?

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

16, while fast and maneuverable, couldn't send balls over to the other side really quickly. They had to go to the bump/bridge to release the balls, since their catapult, while accurate, was too slow for feeding.

16 is perfectly capable of lofting balls quickly to the other side. Delivering them to a certain spot was a much more valuable skill, especially if we were feeding a 3 ball wide intake robot. It was a choice.

[O'Sancheski]

I can see arguments for all the teams that are mentioned. 16, 125, 207 (really didn't see them feed as the only matches I saw them in was Einstein), and 4334 were all great feeders.

4334- the little robot that could and showed tremendous improvement as the year went on. The had a wide intake that was able to scoop the balls up quickly and dump over the barrier. They played some of the best defense I have seen all year. I see this team being the next 2056. Maybe not the amount of regional wins, but definitely the knowledge and skills to be a great team.

125- Started the season with a win in NYC because of amazing strategic planning. They moved on to Boston with a better shooter and ended as finalists. Champs didn't turn out as well as the regionals but still performed well. Speaking with members of 125 at IRI, they realized that they weren't going to be noticed as much if they stuck with shooting. They decided to try the feeding technique and it payed off. They were one of the best feeders there. They were able to give their alliance partners balls quickly because of their hopper and were able to load the balls faster than having to pick them off the floor.

16- Had an amazing season. Three regional wins, Division Champions, and World Champions. Took the feeder role at Champs and were the best feeder in the World. IMHO, they are the best feeder because unlike 125, they picked the balls off the opposing alliances side of the field. This makes the opposing alliance have to cross the barrier in order to retrieve scoring elements. Another reason that 16 was the best feeder was because their intake allowed them to feed directly into a robots intake. This is seen in the "High Score" match at IRI when they feed directly into 118 during telop. Another can be seen when they fed into 148s robot. (Wasn't planned)

Just my $0.02

[Daniel Brim]

Hey everybody, we here at 125 are very proud to have brought as much attention to ourselves as we have.

Our feeding strategy was in our back pocket since the design stage, but it was always a back up plan. We were designed as a shooter first. The first time we tried to feed in this method was during the Boston finals, where we lost out to an amazing alliance of 341, 233, and 246. We did manage to put up a pretty good fight, despite being outgunned - we only lost by 4 points in the second final (if we had put up a few more points, they had a triple balance just about lined up and they would have tried it).

We did use the strategy a few times at championships, but our primary strategy was still regular shooting. We had some other bugs there that made us less desirable - we lost most of two matches due to comms issues (which were 100% our fault). We did think that we had an outside shot at getting picked, but when 3322 is on the board as a final pick, you take them 10 times out of 10.

We had two offseasons between championships and IRI that were also really important in teaching us what bugs we needed to work out. We lost our front intake at Battlecry while playing defense against 78 (their corner went into our front drum, bending the front drive axle pretty badly). At Blitz we realized that we needed a bit more power on the back roller, since we were having motor burnout issues. Between Blitz and IRI we installed a new gearbox that had an extra reduction in it to beef up the back roller.

We knew going into IRI that our shooter was not going to be as consistent as the top teams, and we thought that our feeding ability was going to be the best way to stand out. It worked better than we could have imagined, obviously. We still wish we could have helped take our alliance further, but we're extremely proud of our showing nonetheless.

As for videos: we have some. People at IRI will probably recognize us as the team who had a camera taped to a hockey stick. Videos actually came out fairly well. We will post the match against 1114-67-1592, as well as quarters 3-1 (I reviewed that footage tonight and it came out awesome). There will be a few more that we may put up, and we're putting together a wrap video as well. We'll happily share the links when we're all done. We will also have our CAD up at some point in the future.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

I saw literally one match from IRI, but what made 125 so great at IRI? They were good on Galileo but was not selected for eliminations (I do think they were one of the best teams not picked). Did they make any significant robot or strategy changes?

Essentially 125 spent the majority of the match in the alliance lane. They would take three balls from the HP into their open hopper, drive forward a bit, and shoot them right around the key area. They would rinse and repeat this strategy, also picking up balls off the floor on occasion, until the field was starved.

It made a lot of sense. Because they were in the lane, they couldn't be defended, and they had free reign to stray balls that landed in it. Even a 75% accurate human player would still be giving too many free points to an alliance, when you could be getting guaranteed feeds via 125. It was a great strategic change for IRI.

Originally Posted by Meredith Novak

16 is perfectly capable of lofting balls quickly to the other side. Delivering them to a certain spot was a much more valuable skill, especially if we were feeding a 3 ball wide intake robot. It was a choice.

I'm sorry if I came off as rude. What I meant was that compared to 16 and 4334, 125 could loft balls at a faster rate to the other side. Your tactical strategy of feeding them to the place you did was smart, and very effective for the partners you had. 125's shooting to a not as specific area was effective for the partners they had.

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I'm sorry if I came off as rude. What I meant was that compared to 16 and 4334, 125 could loft balls at a faster rate to the other side. Your tactical strategy of feeding them to the place you did was smart, and very effective for the partners you had. 125's shooting to a not as specific area was effective for the partners they had.

Oh, no. I didn't take it as rude at all. Just pointing out that we had a strategy, and didn't "have to" feed over the bump.

Originally Posted by Meredith Novak

Oh, no. I didn't take it as rude at all. Just pointing out that we had a strategy, and didn't "have to" feed over the bump.

(Sorry to keep posting, but I read this and your other post and had a thought in my head I knew I should post)

Every time I see something about 16 (and a few other teams), I have my initial doubts, find some flaws, and in the end learn something I never thought possible, whilst being proven wrong in everything I thought. Thank you, Team 16, for proving me wrong, and helping me learn.

[BrendanB]

When you step back, there is no real comparison between the three robots because they are completely different have a different strength that a certain alliance captain can see as more valuable.

16: Probably the most agile of the three and have a top notch pickup.

4334: Smaller than your average joe making them the easiest to triple with (especially with two other long robots).

125: Human fed and can shot balls from anywhere on the other side of the field eliminating going to the barrier.

Any robot can be a great feeder like 33, 1114, 987, 233, 2056, 118, 148, 254, 341.....

[jblay]

I'm a big fan of team 125 especially their robot last year and really their robot almost every year (including the fender bot they had this year), and I really hope this doesn't come off the wrong way because I have a lot of respect for the Nutrons, but I think their feeding strategy at IRI simply exploited flawed scouting. Most good human players could inbound a ball into the offensive zone at a rate above 90%. At IRI almost every alliance had a human player capable of inbounding the balls into their offensive zones at a rate around 95%. A strategy that takes a robot and removes it from other tasks in order to raise that rate to 100% make little sense in terms of winning a match or controlling the balls on the field. My view is that it makes more sense for a robot to pick up balls and put them into their offensive zone and let the inbounders do their job. Now if a team simply scouts how many balls a team puts into their offensive zone, this idea of how many more balls enter their zone as a result of what they are doing may not, and rarely will, be accounted for.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

In every single match 125 was in, you could clearly see the constant stream of balls flying across the field from their shooter to the other side. They were so good at their role, that every match they forced their opponents to venture to the other side of the field to get balls.

Every match? I think we had plenty of ammo.

The GoPro version provides an alternate viewpoint, as well as some extended footage.

Even though they were neutralized this match, the video still clearly shows the elegant way in which 125 returned balls across the field.

[Daniel Brim]

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

Every match? I think we had plenty of ammo.

The GoPro version is more fun, posted shortly.

Even though they were neutralized this match, the video still clearly shows the elegant way in which 125 returned balls across the field.

Even though we had some trouble getting across, we still 1. distracted an excellent scorer, and 2. provided a defense-free environment for our partners. So it wasn't really that terrible of a situation.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Daniel Brim

Even though we had some trouble getting across, we still 1. distracted an excellent scorer, and 2. provided a defense-free environment for our partners. So it wasn't really that terrible of a situation.

We intended to block you from the beginning. If you weren't effective at defense/feeding in the matches prior and hadn't caught the attention of our robot driver, you'd have been ignored. You should take the intentional attention as a compliment.

Three's a crowd in scoring. 3322 and 1676 had no issues using the extra ammo made available while you were engaged. The pre-match strategy was executed exactly as our alliance planned, and the end match result bears that out.

[Brandon Holley]

I would never think taking balls from one side of the field and launching them to the other would spark such a healthy conversation about our robot, but apparently I was wrong!

Joe- While I can see your point, and also heard you and others emphasize it in Indiana, I think you are oversimplifying our strategy just a bit. I don't want to go in and start breaking down tape second by second, but just being on that side of the field does a lot. Any balls that would normally find their way into the protected lane, are now in a no fly zone for the other alliance. Ditto for any balls below the key, near the fender. We would often just cruise through that area to be a nuisance. I also disagree that most teams could inbound at 95%, but unless someone took scouting data for that, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Travis- In our qualification match against you guys, I was genuinely surprised to see you playing D on us. We were not expecting a solid scoring robot like yourselves, to not focus completely on scoring. Kudos on a match well played.


Dan explained a bit why we chose the strategy we did in Indiana, but I'll just elaborate a bit more. We went into IRI with a brand new set of drivers, and a well tuned robot. We made several tweaks, and knew we'd have a lot of options for strategy when we got to IRI. We feed a lot because knew it was our best chance at contributing to the WINNING IRI alliance. While we are capable of scoring 10+ balls/match in optimal conditions, we simply are not as fast as many of the other bots that were in Indiana. We knew that the winning alliance in Indiana would feature 2 primo scoring machines and 1 support style robot. Knowing we would most likely not be able to put up the numbers to be one of the 2 scoring machines on the winning alliance, we focused on the support style of play. Extreme backspin on the shooter, smart play, effective balancing and consistent hybrid all helped make a solid feeding machine.



As for who is the best feeder? It is not us. 16 owns that honor by a wide margin. Extremely well driven, extremely agile. Better pickup, ability to become "wide" on the ramp. The Bomb Squad was the best feeder bot this year, hands down.

-Brando

[Ekcrbe]

Originally Posted by jblay

I'm a big fan of team 125 especially their robot last year and really their robot almost every year (including the fender bot they had this year), and I really hope this doesn't come off the wrong way because I have a lot of respect for the Nutrons, but I think their feeding strategy at IRI simply exploited flawed scouting. Most good human players could inbound a ball into the offensive zone at a rate above 90%. At IRI almost every alliance had a human player capable of inbounding the balls into their offensive zones at a rate around 95%. A strategy that takes a robot and removes it from other tasks in order to raise that rate to 100% make little sense in terms of winning a match or controlling the balls on the field. My view is that it makes more sense for a robot to pick up balls and put them into their offensive zone and let the inbounders do their job. Now if a team simply scouts how many balls a team puts into their offensive zone, this idea of how many more balls enter their zone as a result of what they are doing may not, and rarely will, be accounted for.

But, as I said earlier, where the balls go in the offensive zone is quite unappreciated--at least in my opinion. The tendency of inbounders is to put the balls in the opposite corner of the field, 1) in the corner, and 2) in your opponents' lane. Spending time to chase balls down, dig them out, and avoid the defense is time that could be spent shooting. By keeping the balls near the key (their accuracy in doing so was surprising), they are easier to retrieve and less enticing for opponent feeders to return. I'm not just saying this because we picked them, it actually is easier.

As for picking up off the floor, yes, it could have been more effective there.