[MCC] Minimum Competitive Concept 2005

[Mark McLeod]

In autonomous you could score by

1. grabbing a special vision tetra on the floor and scoring on a goal earned bonus tetras on corner goal(s), unfortunately not very much time to get this done, however, the vision tracking could actually be done before the match started.
2. grabbing or dropping starting tetras hanging under each of the corner goals. Very easy to do.
3. Scoring a tetra one robot on each alliance could start with.

Also, scoring under a goal did confer alliance owership, until a higher tetra was scored.

[efoote868]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

In autonomous you could score by

1. grabbing a special vision tetra on the floor and scoring on a goal earned bonus tetras on corner goal(s), unfortunately not very much time to get this done, however, the vision tracking could actually be done before the match started.
2. grabbing or dropping starting tetras hanging under each of the corner goals. Very easy to do.
3. Scoring a tetra one robot on each alliance could start with.

Also, scoring under a goal did confer alliance owership, until a higher tetra was scored.

Using the CMU2-cam in 2005 on the IFI board was a very difficult task, unlike using the web-cameras on the crio in recent years. One of the most challenging parts was that the lighting at every event was different, and the vision tetra could look white or green depending on how the light was hitting it and where your camera was positioned.

FIRST solved the problem in 2006/2007 by making the targets illuminated with cold cathods, but in my opinion anything that was "minimally competitive" had no use for the camera.

[Lil' Lavery]

This is a difficult one. While there were a handful of exceptions, there really was only one useful task in this game (scoring on top of goals). Contact defense was highly risky with the 30-point loading zone penalties and the fact that the best "defense" was often breaking opposing rows via "offense" (capping). The end game only gave points if the entire alliance was in the home area, and the reward was often far less than the potential gain of continuing to score in key areas.

Scoring the vision tetras was difficult, but knocking off the corner tetras was incredibly simple and still conferred (often temporary) ownership of a corner goal. Simply put, there was no reason not to knock off the corner tetra, and doing so freed up a >MCC robots to focus on other tasks (vision tetras, loading from auto loaders like 233, or scoring the one pre-loaded tetra). Also, this was relatively early in the "autonomous era" (started in 2003), so there were plenty of teams who sat and did nothing in autonomous.

The auto loaders were surprisingly difficult for many teams to load from, but the human loaders were easy (albeit much more time consuming).

Many teams made cumbersome arms/elevators designed to score on high stacks (and the taller center goal), often resulting in all of their scoring taking much longer and being much less reliable. In most matches, stacks didn't even accumulate that high to begin with. Focusing on scoring on shorter stacks and leaving the center goal (beyond the first tetra or two) to alliance partners may enable a simpler and easier to operate design for teams with limited machining resources.

A tetra manipulator with some sort of stabilization (even as simple as the passive devices on 217/229, 330, and 254) greatly reduced the amount of time required to score and reduced the odds of dropping a tetra.

Scoring multiple tetras at a time was a beneficial feature, but ultimately not a particularly important one. No need for a MCC to focus on this.

So, to summarize:
A robot capable of knocking off the corner tetras, human loading, and scoring on short tetra stacks with some sort of stabilizing manipulator. Obviously the drive-base should be reliable, easy to control, and reasonably fast. And the driver should avoid penalties!!

[Adam Freeman]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

This is a difficult one.....

So, to summarize:
A robot capable of knocking off the corner tetras, human loading, and scoring on short tetra stacks with some sort of stabilizing manipulator. Obviously the drive-base should be reliable, easy to control, and reasonably fast. And the driver should avoid penalties!!

I agree. A MCC robot would typically be a third member of an alliance. The strategy for our championship alliance was to only focus on scoring on half the field. We split that half amongst our three alliance partners. With our third partner (503) scoring on the rear corner and middle goals. 503 wasn't really an MCC machine that year, since we had them as the 4th best machine in the division and picked them with the 9th pick (non-serpentine draft).

But, they essentially performed MCC type tasks in the elims. Reliable drive base, human load, passive manipilator, capable of scoring on shorter goals.

Maybe my expectations of a MCC type machine are a little high. But, with the penalty rules the way they were...there wasn't much else you could do in this game if you weren't scoring to help your alliance.

Good topic. Minimum level for this game was probably a little higher than any of the games since then.

[BJC]

Were wedges still legal in 2005?

If so, I vote for box on wheels and flip down wedges..

Regards, Bryan

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by BJC

Were wedges still legal in 2005?

If so, I vote for box on wheels and flip down wedges..

Regards, Bryan

They were only allowed in a passive manner; you couldn't intentionally tip someone with them. However, if you were placing a tetra going about your business and someone rammed you and tipped themselves, it's their fault.

[BJC]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

They were only allowed in a passive manner; you couldn't intentionally tip someone with them. However, if you were placing a tetra going about your business and someone rammed you and tipped themselves, it's their fault.

Then I change my vote to Trapizoid with wheels.

Even without being able to activly tip people, I would pick one of these around the back half of the draft over most tetra-placing robots that would still around to be a third pick.

[bduddy]

Our (840's) robot that year was very simple and ended up being quite effective...

http://art.cim3.org/2004-2005_Files/...20%5BHQ%5D.JPG
http://art.cim3.org/2004-2005_Files/...ns/gripper.jpg

[Conor Ryan]

Ahhh 2005, what a great year. Probably my favorite in terms of design, I just had a lot of fun with it. In many ways it was a very even playing field.

Minimally Competitive Robots were used quite frequently in competitions, however I recall from many of the champions that strategy didn't quite pan out. However, this was a very weird era, it was the first year of a really good kit drive train. Prior to 2005, the KOP was a lot worse, the idea of having a reliable drivetrain was not feasible to many teams.

What 2005 brought though was the first ever reliable KOP drivetrain that was designed with FRC in mind. It wasn't until that happened that teams were able to focus on manipulator designs extensively.

So I think the explanation is it was kind of stuck from an old era, and a possibly a test by the GDC to see if it would make the field more competitive overall.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

What 2005 brought though was the first ever reliable KOP drivetrain that was designed with FRC in mind. It wasn't until that happened that teams were able to focus on manipulator designs extensively.

So I think the explanation is it was kind of stuck from an old era, and a possibly a test by the GDC to see if it would make the field more competitive overall.

Thats a good point. The first year of 3 team alliances and the first kit bot probably led to a lot of angst for the GDC that year.

THIS IS WHY WE TRY NEW THINGS

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by IKE

I am bringing this one up as it hase beena few years since we had a "unique" playing piece. Other than its weight, I felt the Tetra was an excellent playing piece.

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

What 2005 brought though was the first ever reliable KOP drivetrain that was designed with FRC in mind. It wasn't until that happened that teams were able to focus on manipulator designs extensively.

So I think the explanation is it was kind of stuck from an old era, and a possibly a test by the GDC to see if it would make the field more competitive overall.

Originally Posted by Gregor

Thats a good point. The first year of 3 team alliances and the first kit bot probably led to a lot of angst for the GDC that year.

THIS IS WHY WE TRY NEW THINGS

Also, interesting note, this might explain why we had such a unique game piece.... GDC was trying to encourage innovative manipulators.

[Taylor]

Box on wheels with zip ties touching the ground.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Box on wheels with zip ties touching the ground.

I forgot about the zipties to touch the "triangle of doom". We installed paint brushes.

So as many have realized I picked this year as it was not an easy year to build a super simple robot. That being said, the next level up was not actually that complex, and could be incredily effective. I am very glad that 330 got the early shout out as they are a team that often builds "elegant" designs that are are amazingly effective.

We on 33 started that year with a different MCC (Most Complicated Contraption). It was a double jointed arm, Swerve drive, had the ability to store a bonus tetra, and a super gripper that had like 3 motions... The first event did not go well. We spent eliminations rebuilding the drive train to a 4x4 and benchmarking good manipulators.

While the robot may not be a good MCC, the end effectors that were effective that year were super simple in appearance, but often highly optimized.
Stick and a string, pitch fork, cross with a ball on the end.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Taylor

Box on wheels with zip ties touching the ground.

There was really no place for that robot in 2005. It would have been almost completely worthless. Due to how hard it was to play effective defense and how big the risk was for getting penalized, defensive bots were almost useless.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BJC

Were wedges still legal in 2005?

If so, I vote for box on wheels and flip down wedges..

Legal, yes. Used to tip other robots over, red card. Which is, I think, why wedges have been illegal since 2006. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/photos/21301 shows a tie match in Archimedes QFs; this was the only 0-0 eliminations match (and might still be). This particular one was caused by red cards for tipping, as I understand it. The offenders both either carried wedges or had them built into their robot.

I do remember at least one Box-on-Wheels with a flip-down wedge on one end. No eliminations for it, and I seem to recall a number of penalties.

330 used theirs to keep other robots from interfering with scoring. Usually it worked. Then there was the one robot that had to be dealt with in another way... by lifting the tetra that we were picking up (one of ours, of course) and they had their wheel in. They started coming along with it, we put it down, and they didn't bother us like that again.