Will you NEED to be able to pick up off the ground?

[RonnieS]

I know there are teams doing floor pick ups and feeder pick ups and some of both but will it be necessary to have a ground pick up?

[Squeakypig]

Absolutely not. However, seeing some of your shooter prototypes that you posted, if you really are shooting from the feeder station (depending on your accuracy) it might be beneficial for you or one of your alliance partners to have one. Then again, it could weigh your robot down making climbing harder.

But no, you can play the game without one.

[Drivencrazy]

I don't think you NEED to do anything. If you choose to spend the time you would have used making a floor pick-up in a constructive way (i.e. making a climber better and more solid or making a more consistent shooter) I think that is a completely viable option.

This game has tons of game pieces behind the alliance wall so no I don't think you need to pick up.

[ehochstein]

Pre-competition season the only reason I see the need for a pick up off the ground is for autonomous. Shoot three frisbees in the top goal, pick up two more and shoot those as well. You then have 30 points, equivalent to a top level hang.

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by Squeakypig

Absolutely not. However, seeing some of your shooter prototypes that you posted, if you really are shooting from the feeder station (depending on your accuracy) it might be beneficial for you or one of your alliance partners to have one. Then again, it could weigh your robot down making climbing harder.

But no, you can play the game without one.

We are very accurate but many of us wanted the campibility to pick up in auto, that would be the only reason for it in our opinion.

[topgun]

Given the date of the build season I would say your team made their choice weeks ago and it didn't include floor pickup. I would recommend making what you have the best there is and don't worry about.

As a thought for the future, are there really any FRC games where you don't want to pick up from the floor?

[RonnieS]

Originally Posted by topgun

Given the date of the build season I would say your team made their choice weeks ago and it didn't include floor pickup. I would recommend making what you have the best there is and don't worry about.

As a thought for the future, are there really any FRC games where you don't want to pick up from the floor?

We left space for it because we wanted to amke sure we had everything else finished first and now we are looking saying, we still have plenty of time. Does a sub group want to work on it further?

[Kevin Sevcik]

Ground pickup will be a huge advantage in this game, as there's inevitably going to be missed shots laying about, and every four misses you pick up is one less trip to the feeder station.

That said, you can still play the game if you don't have ground pickup, you'll just be playing differently.

[Tyler Olds]

During the first 15 seconds it could be very important................

[Chris is me]

There are two times it really matters. Autonomous and the end-game if you aren't going for a "long" hang. If you aren't confident in your multi-disc autonomous mode, the energy invested in floor loading might be better put into a hanger.

[toastnbacon]

I think it's a fairly low priority. There are enough to load from the feeder station. That's not saying it's not a good thing, there are also enough to pick up that it would be beneficial (with a good shooter, that is). I think it comes down to a fairly simple question, will it score you more points that it might cost you on the pyramid. We decided it's not worth the time to design and build it.

[Kevin Sevcik]

Originally Posted by Ronnie314

We left space for it because we wanted to amke sure we had everything else finished first and now we are looking saying, we still have plenty of time. Does a sub group want to work on it further?

Is your robot wired, programmed, shooting accurately and scoring in autonomous mode? If not, you're not actually done. If building a pickup mechanism won't interfere with these other tasks, then go ahead. But I'd recommend you finish those other things first before you tie up the robot adding a pickup mechanism.

[NXTGeek]

I have never seen a shooter game where regional bots have amazing accuracy. In championship eliminations I think that a ground pickup may become less used, but in regionals at least I think that there will always be frisbees on the ground at a given moment.
Of course, everything depends on the joined capabilities of an alliance.

[Boe]

My team initialy decided to go with loader station only, but then decided to make one for auton pickup. Our thought was that you can go to the feeder station and get 4 disks in the same time or faster as you can pick them up.

[Brandon Zalinsky]

When we made this decision earlier in the year, our minds were made up by past experience. In 2009, we could not pick up off the ground, and for this reason, we were dead last at our regional. We did not want to make this choice again, and pickup from the floor was near the top of our priority list.