Unique robot design?

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

You mean like this?

You know you guys are one of our "hero" teams, right? After 2013, our goal was to get up to your level.

Hero team? You flatter me, sir. We just do our best.

I also see some carbon fiber on your robot.

We may incorporate carbon fiber, but at this point in the season, we may not. We didn't make use of carbon fiber last year either. If we're struggling on weight, some carbon fiber parts may need to be made.

Our intake is like this!
See Attached:

Robot #3 is on its way!

[mrnoble]

That looks really sweet. I see that you guys either shortened or lengthened your wheelbase in your second iteration (I'm guessing the longer one is the newer one). You're right, they do look like mandibles. Ours is similar, though we've limited the range of motion more since they fold vertically.

We did do the belly in carbon fiber this year; one of our big goals was to teach the kids to do layup, and it's gone really well. We've also experimented with other parts, like gussets. Another big goal was to get the comp bot powder coated, and I'm pleased to say it will get back to us from our new sponsor Blue Flame on Wednesday.

May as well post the rest of the pictures now too. The first is our stack of sliders; the second is the full bot as she stood yesterday.

[mrnoble]

Full bot.

[bEdhEd]

The new one's shorter, and the even newer final one will be an inch shorter than the short one in the picture. We can continue this conversation as a PM if you wish.

[ThunderousPrime]

Originally Posted by K-Dawg157

I think that the highest scoring robots are going to be the ones that can move fast enough to complete a stacked tote set in autonomous, because that means that they are efficient and good at what they do.

Pair a robot that can do this with another that can get a noodle and put it on top of the stack, and we could have a high scoring match... very high scoring if the other robot can stack well too.

The highest score an alliance can get is 433. As Calculated in the document.

Your Maximum Scoring Document is wrong in varying categories. First, you can't score both a stacked tote set and tote set. "A TOTE SET exists if all three (3) Yellow TOTES from an ALLIANCE are fully contained by the AUTO ZONE, but do not
meet the requirements of a STACKED TOTE SET, at the end of AUTO."

Also if you score 7 of your Litter pieces in RCs than you can score the other 3 pieces as unprocessed litter for 4pts each. You cannot score the opposing alliance's 4 pieces as unprocessed litter without incurring fouls. And speaking of incurring fouls the maximum score gets really interesting when you consider teams accidentally spilling their game pieces onto the other side of the field. There are no rules that say you cant score those pieces. Additionally if they descore your game pieces when they knock their game pieces over the step you gain the points they descored at the end of the match. Again, nothing says you cant rescore those pieces so that could increase your max score.

[who716]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Hoping I have figured out how to share this. This is one of our special features. We plan on using this to clear out the landfill in autonomous or the early game. It's based on something many of you are familiar with this time of year: a hydrolic (in this case pneumatic) snowplow.

can you explain how this snow plow will work i dont see it possible for anyone to simply push the totes in the landfill around you have the two foot step in the back so no pushing it that way and you have them pretty much the full width of the field minus the small whole in the center, i only see it possible to pull them.

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by who716

can you explain how this snow plow will work i dont see it possible for anyone to simply push the totes in the landfill around you have the two foot step in the back so no pushing it that way and you have them pretty much the full width of the field minus the small whole in the center, i only see it possible to pull them.

While G17 makes it clear that we can't react against the HORIZONTAL surface of the step, we ARE allowed to react against the vertical side. We are lining up the plow blade and pushing. There is plenty of room to line up.

I'm sort of surprised that, in all the discussion about accessing the recycling containers on the step, people are only talking about ways to reach over the landfill. Why not just move it?

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

I'm sort of surprised that, in all the discussion about accessing the recycling containers on the step, people are only talking about ways to reach over the landfill. Why not just move it?

Reasons we decided not to move the landfill totes.
- We think it's faster to pull them over than to move the totes first.
- The land fill is a nice and organized area to pull totes from. Why would you want to mess that up when you can practice an efficient pattern at stacking and sorting them from their known starting position.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Reasons we decided not to move the landfill totes.
- We think it's faster to pull them over than to move the totes first.
- The land fill is a nice and organized area to pull totes from. Why would you want to mess that up when you can practice an efficient pattern at stacking and sorting them from their known starting position.

We decided against a snowplow mainly because it was faster to reach over, depending on the grabber.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

I'm sort of surprised that, in all the discussion about accessing the recycling containers on the step, people are only talking about ways to reach over the landfill. Why not just move it?

We had a team of students and a mentor prototype mechanisms to do this for about a week, ranging from a cow catcher to a curved "tote redirector" that drove along an alliance wall. The cow catcher / snowplow designs for us were pretty terrible at getting much past the first layer of totes once you built the entire wall configuration. The "tote redirector" may have worked if we had lined it with idler wheels (think 1717's spine last year), but at that point we decided we weren't winning the auton battle and that our intake would be able to clear the 3-4 totes in the way quickly enough for qualifications in teleop.

[ArtemusMaximus]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I think this year will be a year with more variation than typical. Yes, there will be a lot of elevators and those will certainly share a number of similarities, but after that, the sky's the limit.

There will be Double Stackers and there will be Stack On Stacks Stackers. There will be Landfill Munchers and Loading Station Loiterers.

And that is before we've even started talking Cans. Upright Cans Only Machines will be quite different from Knocked Over Can Machines which will be different from Step Can Grabber Machines.

Then there are noodles? There will be machines that are Noodle-Ignorers and machines that are Noodle-Centric.

Also, lets not forget that some teams will design in mechanisms for knocking over stacks while making it look like an accident for when they need their alliance partners to fall in the rankings. Those are going to be crazy looking rigs ;-) (no, no, no... ...just kidding).

Then there is the whole constrained Transport Configuration vs. virtually unlimited Competition Size. Not since bumpers rules effectively made "The Big Flop" illegal (I'm looking at YOU, Bill Beatty ;-) will we have robots with such imposing wheel bases driving on the Carpet Fields of FIRST.

Then there is the whole crazy (but maybe crazy like a fox) idea of I'm-building-for-Einstein-and-I-don't-care-if-I-rank-dead-last-during-the-qualifiers Strategy (cough, cough, simultaneous 4 can auton grab, cough, cough)*

Bottom line. I think this year will be a better than typical year for robot variety.

I will close with this. I can't/won't share the Overclocked 2015 Robot just yet, but I will say that we've nick named her "Scorpion" and she's worthy of the name.

Cheers,
Dr. Joe J.

*don't be a hater. I haven't let any cats out of any bags. With 1000's of FRC teams do you think your team was the ONLY team that thought long and hard about that idea? I myself stared long and hard into that abyss before shrinking back in horror (the horror, the long spindly, almost certainly rickety horror).

P.S. This is a very tongue in cheek reply. Don't take this too seriously. Lighten up. Really. JJ

"Scorpion" you say. Sounds like design I had in mind, but have no team this year to implement any of my ideas
I suspect scorpion part is the one that loads noodles into the can?

[ArtemusMaximus]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

That looks really sweet. I see that you guys either shortened or lengthened your wheelbase in your second iteration (I'm guessing the longer one is the newer one). You're right, they do look like mandibles. Ours is similar, though we've limited the range of motion more since they fold vertically.

We did do the belly in carbon fiber this year; one of our big goals was to teach the kids to do layup, and it's gone really well. We've also experimented with other parts, like gussets. Another big goal was to get the comp bot powder coated, and I'm pleased to say it will get back to us from our new sponsor Blue Flame on Wednesday.

May as well post the rest of the pictures now too. The first is our stack of sliders; the second is the full bot as she stood yesterday.

Correct me if I am wrong. Looks like bot will lift totes one at the time, hold them separately in the air and stack them all at once when putting them down?

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by ArtemusMaximus

Correct me if I am wrong. Looks like bot will lift totes one at the time, hold them separately in the air and stack them all at once when putting them down?

That's correct.

[ArtemusMaximus]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

That's correct.

Awesome !!!

[IronicDeadBird]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Reasons we decided not to move the landfill totes.
- We think it's faster to pull them over than to move the totes first.
- The land fill is a nice and organized area to pull totes from. Why would you want to mess that up when you can practice an efficient pattern at stacking and sorting them from their known starting position.

So the concept behind the snow plow is based more or less on playing pool. When you start up a game you break apart the triangle of balls and then pick off easy shots. If you look at our robots design you will see that it can handle multiple totes at once, but the time it takes to get to these totes and be ready to pickup isn't instantaneous, we have a lift we need to adjust (we got rid of a lot of alignment time with el toro but its still there). When we crack open the field or goal is to space totes out so we have quick pickup lines and no idle time where the gap between two totes is large enough that our mechanisms are ready to pickup a tote by the time we get to our next tote. The other advantage of this as in pool is when you break it open you have the chance of moving totes closer to where you need them. With vision drivers should be able to quickly identify pickup lines by tote orientation and looking for basic patterns one of the key ones I imagine is a path of totes roughly in the same orientation that starts close to the scoring platform dives a bit into landfill then comes back out. What I do not want to happen is that drivers get stuck in the habit of going for the closest tote to them when picking lines and spending time on a stubborn tote. I can see that happening a lot to teams that are keeping the starting pattern they only pickup totes in a certain order when in reality that order might not be the best. Breaking apart the totes should make those decisions on which tote to go to next much more clear.

Edit: Anybody got a better term then pickup lines in retrospect there has to be one...