Are active intakes necessary to be competitive in Recycle Rush?

[MrForbes]

There are too many variables here....are you talking about robots that are designed to get totes only from the human player? or only from the landfill? or from either? How does having an active intake, compare to having a mostly self aligning "passive" intake? There are lots of ways to get ahold of totes. Some will be faster than others, and whether or not they are "active" probably won't be the only discerning factor.

I like how the yes and no votes are split pretty evenly right now....

[NWChen]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

There are too many variables here....are you talking about robots that are designed to get totes only from the human player? or only from the landfill? or from either?

I made the only options "yes" and "no" just to get a quick idea of the community's thoughts. BJC raised some good points, but now that we're so many votes in I should probably clarify:

I'm looking at active intakes from the perspective of all functions: breaking up the landfill, acquiring totes from the landfill, acquiring totes from the human player, acquiring recycling containers, etc.. Naturally there are infinite use cases based on individual robot designs, but I'm looking for a general idea of the importance of active intakes this year - for example, if your robot follows a specific strategy (e.g. feeding from the human player), then how would an active intake improve your ability to acquire totes from the human player and thus be competitive?

[asid61]

I said no because they're not really necessary, however, I think that the most competitive robots will mostly have active intakes.

[Anupam Goli]

If an active intake allows you to be quicker and more efficient than your passive intake, then it will make you more competitive.

[Joseph1825]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

If an active intake allows you to be quicker and more efficient than your passive intake, then it will make you more competitive.

I'm not trying to disagree with you specifically, this is just something I have seen on Chiefdelphi several times and I wanted to comment on it.
You can't simply say, "if an active intake makes you quicker it makes you more competitive". Because for any improvement to a robot you have an "opportunity cost" (or, what you gave up to get it). If making your intake active takes 3 more days then a passive intake, then your opportunity cost is whatever you could have done in those three days. (3 more days of driver practice?) The real question is, "Will making an active intake make me more competitive than anything else I could have spent my time doing?"

[Anupam Goli]

Originally Posted by Joseph1825

I'm not trying to disagree with you specifically, this is just something I have seen on Chiefdelphi several times and I wanted to comment on it.
You can't simply say, "if an active intake makes you quicker it makes you more competitive". Because for any improvement to a robot you have an "opportunity cost" (or, what you gave up to get it). If making your intake active takes 3 more days then a passive intake, then your opportunity cost is whatever you could have done in those three days. (3 more days of driver practice?) The real question is, "Will making an active intake make me more competitive than anything else I could have spent my time doing?"

I firmly believe that in most cases a passive system's competitive ceiling is far lower than an active system's competitive ceiling, and thus worth the tradeoff. Will this year have that case? I guess we'll find out in 4.5 weeks.

Of course this is all put to the test when we're dealing with a lower amount of resources.

[waialua359]

Build a manipulator/device that takes the human element out of the equation via robot design and/or programming as much as possible.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

I firmly believe that in most cases a passive system's competitive ceiling is far lower than an active system's competitive ceiling, and thus worth the tradeoff. Will this year have that case? I guess we'll find out in 4.5 weeks.

Of course this is all put to the test when we're dealing with a lower amount of resources.

It will, but it'll still cost you stuff. Our team decided against an active pickup - we found that (at least the ones we were capable of manufacturing) didn't improve approach angles enough to make it worth it.

--1-2 extra motors/wheels/belts/associated hardware mounted forward will make your robot tippier.
--A few person-days of effort to prototype and attach the active device will cost you driver training and debugging time on other parts of the robot.
--If your active pickup ends up being breakable (and your pickup isn't usable without it), then it adds a single point of failure on your robot. If you lose effectiveness for 1-2 matches in a season, that brings your totes-per-match average _way_ down.

To a powerhouse team it is a no-brainer: they have ample man/womanpower and cash to make it happen. To a team that has to trade training or testing time for it or skip another mechanism, it might not be the same decision.

[Ginger Power]

Originally Posted by NWChen

I'm looking at active intakes from the perspective of all functions: breaking up the landfill, acquiring totes from the landfill, acquiring totes from the human player, acquiring recycling containers, etc.. Naturally there are infinite use cases based on individual robot designs, but I'm looking for a general idea of the importance of active intakes this year - for example, if your robot follows a specific strategy (e.g. feeding from the human player), then how would an active intake improve your ability to acquire totes from the human player and thus be competitive?

Breaking up the landfill- Passive is just fine Skip ahead to the 50 second mark.

Acquiring totes from the landfill- An active mechanism, if built right, should be more efficient than a passive mechanism. The Greenhorns claw mechanism took a very long time to line up in order to acquire a tote. If the lining up process was somehow automated as others have mentioned then I could see a passive mechanism being super efficient. However, even with this automation you generally have a smaller margin of error with a passive mechanism than an active one.

Acquiring Totes from human player: I think there are simple ways to build a passive intake mechanism that can stack totes quicker than the HP can load them.

Overall importance- I think active intake mechanisms are far from vital, yet offer an advantage. They are probably less important than they are most years IMO.

[GeeTwo]

Bottom line on this thread seems to be: speed to acquire a game piece is necessary to be competitive. An active intake is the favorite strategy to achieve this, though not the only one.

[dellagd]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

There are too many variables here....are you talking about robots that are designed to get totes only from the human player? or only from the landfill? or from either? How does having an active intake, compare to having a mostly self aligning "passive" intake? There are lots of ways to get ahold of totes. Some will be faster than others, and whether or not they are "active" probably won't be the only discerning factor.

I like how the yes and no votes are split pretty evenly right now....

Absolutely. There are way to many designs teams could be going with for this game to draw a line of whether or not an 'active intake mechanism' is necessary at all to be competitive.

Originally Posted by NWChen

If your robot follows a specific strategy (e.g. feeding from the human player), then how would an active intake improve your ability to acquire totes from the human player and thus be competitive?

Thats kinda an odd question to pose as a poll, but I see what you were going for.

[Dunngeon]

As BJC said, if something decreases your cycle time, it's in your best competitive interest to pursue it. Obviously, resources and other limiting metrics apply here. That said, I believe most successful robots will have some component on their intake that can be defined as active.