What we learned from week 1

[ToddF]

Originally Posted by Alex Cormier

I do not understand this comment, please explain more.

Where the carpet is smooth, the disks are optimally placed, and the driver and operator make no mistakes, picking up from the floor can be very quick. If any of these factors are missing, which is often, the number of hoppers of disks shot in a match drops by about one. For us, if everything went perfectly, we could pickup and shoot 3 hoppers worth. If there were problems, that dropped to 2 or 1 hopper.

When we tried going to the feeder station, even with light defense, we could load 2-3 hoppers. Again, drive team mistakes, or heavy defense could drop that number by 1 or 2.

One factor we did not expect was that at least one defender seemed to be targeting our arm for damage. They would back off when it was up, but as soon as it would come down, the defender seemed like they were trying to hit the arm. We expected some amount of consequential damage, but did not prepare enough spares for that kind of defense, even though the possibility was certainly foreseeable.

Since floor pickup and feeder loading seemed to be roughly equal in speed, (at least with our arm) we made the strategic decision to reduce the risk of damage to our arm by saving it for autonomous scoring. We would also use it if heavily defended when running back and forth to the feeder station.

The equation changes a bit if you have a very fast floor pickup mechanism, and/or have had lots of time to practice with it. That may shift the balance towards floor pickup.