Continuous Floor Loading?

[EricH]

It depends on the application, of course. However, in general, there are also two types of applications.

1) Precision Placement. 2005, 2007, 2011 come to mind, as well as the 2008 endgame. In this, you're trying to place something on something else with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

2) In the Big Hole. Shooting-type games tend to land in this category, just put a lot of projectiles on the target.


Generally, precision placement games will lend themselves for a gripper-type pickup. (If you're going to lump roller claws into "continuous", you need to make sure that you're ONLY lumping the rollers in to use your own definition consistently. I'd consider them hybrid; it's a gripper with a continuous in-feed.) And yes, some of the best pick-and-place robots out there have used gripper-type claws without any sort of continuous component.

On the other hand, "big hole" games will tend to call for a continuous pickup to acquire ammunition for the massive shot at the target. Aerial Assist, due to only one gamepiece, was a slight exception, but most of the successful teams tended to use continuous.

And then there are the hybrids. Often, a given challenge will call for something that neither grippers nor continuous can completely provide. That's when life gets interesting, as you try to figure out whether to add a continuous to a gripper or vice versa, and automate the whole thing... I'll pick on 1197 this last year as having a hybrid. The initial intake was continuous, but if the storage/secondary intake wasn't in the right place the ball was then useless, putting it more in a gripper class. (Some clever code made the positioning automatic, or very nearly automatic, when the driver pressed the right button.) If both were in the right place, everybody within 15 feet of the sides of the field knew when they hit a ball they wanted as it smacked into the back of the storage...

[SoftwareBug2.0]

One other way that you could classify pickup systems is by whether they handle more than one of the item in the same part at the same time or if they must be dealt with in a sequence. This is orthagonol to whether they're dealt with continously or in a batch.

I agree the previous posters that continous is usually better. I am especially inclined to agree with Joe G.'s reasoning that they're easier to control. Often it's trivial: just turn it on and let it run.

[glennword]

Don't forget about 1986's 2013 pickup, with the "thumbs" for indexing and the arm. I would classify that as hybrid, although the argument could be made that it was purely passive or noncontinuous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKy-IKDq_6o

[Joseph Smith]

In my opinion, the choice between a continuous pickup and a singular pickup comes down to one factor- how many game pieces your robot can possess.
If you can ever possess more than one game piece, I would always go for the fastest pickup possible, which is always going to be a continuous pickup. If you are limited to possessing one piece at a time, then you can consider a singular pickup, but this isn't necessarily always the best option. When it comes to acquiring and possessing gamepieces, the fastest and most reliable loader is the best loader.

[Orion.DeYoe]

Originally Posted by glennword

Don't forget about 1986's 2013 pickup, with the "thumbs" for indexing and the arm. I would classify that as hybrid, although the argument could be made that it was purely passive or noncontinuous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKy-IKDq_6o

That was a completely passive mechanism. No active components (other than the drivetrain) were involved in getting the gamepiece into the scoop.

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by Orion.DeYoe

That was a completely passive mechanism. No active components (other than the drivetrain) were involved in getting the gamepiece into the scoop.

How about the mechanism for lifting the scoop from the floor to the hopper?