Are active intakes necessary to be competitive in Recycle Rush?

[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.

[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.

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

Stacking needs to be the optimal goal. Then how you gather the totes is secondary. If you use forks or the Greenhorns design - a lot of stacking can be accomplished.

You might wanna rethink your priorities. You can't stack what you don't have.

[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.

[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.

[Dan Petrovic]

What's necessary to be competitive is a pair of drivers that can get the job done. Whatever makes the drivers' jobs easier helps a lot, of course, but if the drivers can get the job done without the added complexity and weight of an active mechanism, then great.

To preface: we plan on specializing in controlling containers. We have plans to be able to stack totes if necessary, but that is not our primary focus. This year, we chose not to use rollers for our manipulators because the containers and totes don't run away from you if you bump them like balls or inner-tubes do from previous years. We're confident that our drivers will be able to render the biggest advantage of an active intake pointless.

I believe that a team's success this year will hinge more on driver skill and experience than any year in recent memory, so try to get your drivers plenty of practice.

[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.

[rlowe61]

Originally Posted by BJC

Recycle Rush, like all FRC games have been in the modern era, is about how many points/second your team's robot / alliance can score. The more points you score, the more competitive you are.

The robot generally goes through a cycle in order to score. Something like:
1. Move to game piece(s).
2. Pick up game piece(s).
3. Move to scoring area.
4. Score game piece(s).
5. Repeat.

How quickly do can do a cycle determines how many cycles you do which determines how many points you can score.

Cheers, Bryan

I have to agree with Bryan. In every game you have the cycle (wash, Rinse, Repeat).
Now active is a vague term. You can have active, which allows for the robot to come to a game peice and the rollers will pull it in, and you can have an active system which assist the robot in manipulating the piece so the robot better aligned. I would think that being able to have rollers that can assist with turning totes a little, so the robot doesn't have to do fine moves, will be the biggest help. An active system that pulls in totes can be delayed if the robot has to do all the aligning first.
Good Luck and Have Fun

roger

[gurellia53]

I have wondered about active intakes for this year's game. I think there's a good comparison of Recycle Rush and Ultimate Ascent. In 2013, you could be extremely successful by being purely a human loaded robot - no floor pickup and no active intake necessary. This year is the same but with fewer game pieces available to the human player. Also, loading from the human player will be slower.

This means that each alliance will likely require at least one robot to play without interaction with the human player. This increases value of landfill robots and recycle container robots which will likely require active intake mechanisms.

Still, pure human loaded robots won't need an active intake if they interface directly with the tote chute.