Stacking - gone already? :-p

[Ricky Q.]

It seems that alot of people through viewing regionals that are being webcast so far have lost all hope in the stacking bots...but do we really want to do that? I don't think so, not yet....We are a stacker, and I think we have the ability to do it well, we just didnt get a lot of practice, which is what most of the teams are proabably suffering from, or just failure of a machine. There are teams that will stack it up, and do it well...They just have to pan out. Stackers going to more than 1 regional are lucky, they get more and more practice, for us...We have Thursday...but just give the stackers a chance....They'll come through for some massive scores.

And I know all the arguments against stacking, too easy to knock over, too much time...but if you can get it down, and defend them well, which some teams will be able to do, I know it. Then you can get high in the seedings and have some success....We have 4 more weeks of regionals..let the stackers pan out

[sevisehda]

I wondered how long it would take for someone to make this post. As sit here this morning watching the Buckeye and VCU webcasts and a documentary about the Bismark on the Learning Channle eating my breakfast of toast. I am pondering 3 questions 1) Will stacking ever happen in an quantity? 2) What will the bots look like by Nats? 3) Which is better Toast with Butter or Jelly?

1) I've seen a few bots pick up crates and they either don't do anything with them or the crate falls out. Other internal stackers rely on the boxes being upright and they wonder around looking for them, when the match ends they normally haven't let go of them. Maybe in finals we'll see some well thought out strategy including stackers. Something tells me this won't happen though and stacking will go the way of the Dodo.

2) Since stacking seems a lost cause will teams continue to run with there current bots. There is plenty of tipping especailly of the taller stackers. I think a large portion of these teams may slice off there superstructure and go for a pure pushbot. Others may add wing to extend there width. I think by nats the vast majority of bots will be highly modded.

3) I think I prefer the buttered toast.

I'll clause all this by stateing its still early but we've seen the basic cross section of bots. Unless your stacking in a completely different way I don't think you'll do as well as everyone else. However I haven't seen any rampdoms this weekend. If you consider the fact they'd stop the movement of bots(5 on average) over the ramp. Maybe this will slow the match enough to allow stacking. Good Luck and Gods Speed.

[Vincent Chan]

I don't know. I've seen a few bots that seem to be quite successful. And a match of consisting of no bot that doesn't do anything but push (wow that was a lot of negatives) will yield VERY high scores. I think stacking bots have a use, though limited, and they can rack up a few QPs rather easily, given the opportunity.

Perhaps they'll modify their stacking structures to be shorter else add something to make their pushing more effective, but I don't see stacking just going out of the picture. The benefits of having one match where teams stack against each other instead of push and shove are too great to be ignored.

[Tyler 178]

From watching the Buckeye (ohio) regional, it seems like not very many stackers were succesful.

Only one team had a really good stacker that I saw and that was team 0073. They were .NOT 2002 overall champions (sorry for the mix-up ). They had a good bot.
Their tallest stack was 4 high.

Props to team 0073! Your bot was awesome, and you guys should have gone on to finals, you deserved it.

Dreams of 7 or 8 high stacks aren't going to happen.

It's too bad there isn't more stacking goin on though. I think it was supposed to be a big part of the game. It will definately help your team out if you can stack well though

[Madison]

Originally posted by Tyler 178
From watching the Buckeye (ohio) regional, it seems like not very many stackers were succesful.

Only one team had a really good stacker that I saw and that was team 0073. They were 2002 overall champions. So as a vetran team, they had a good bot.
Their tallest stack was 4 high.

Props to team 0073! Your bot was awesome, and you guys should have gone on to finals, you deserved it.

73 wasn't a Champion last year. They didn't even compete

Tigerbolt/Visioneers won the Championship in 1996, if I recall correctly.

Before competing, their stacker was optimized for stacks over 4 bins tall. Anything smaller presented a challenge to release. After Thursday's practice rounds, and a bit on Friday, they changed things so it was optimized for stacks of 4 or less. It can go higher still, but isn't as efficient.

Still, it's a very impressive system for bringing in bins, and given the history of such systems being used to bring in balls, I'm surprised we didn't see it used more.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally posted by Tyler 178
Only one team had a really good stacker that I saw and that was team 0073. They were 2002 overall champions. So as a vetran team, they had a good bot.
Their tallest stack was 4 high.

It was 173 that won last year, not 73!

[sevisehda]

It was anounced that at Ohio there were 2 succesful stacks placed. 2. Yes 2. The number 1 thing is to defend your human player stack at all cost. Many of the matches at the end had bots protect that box for the entire match.

A autonomous mode someone should workout is to low ride under the bar. Seek there stack and have the bot programmed to park in front of it. Then they would be in position to gaurd it for the entire match.

[sanddrag]

At Buckeye I saw a robot orient boxes and make a stack of four and hold it but it was not able to deposit it correctly.

[Richard Wallace]

At St Louis, 868 built a 6-stack in Match 78. Their QP score for that match was 327, the second-highest for any match at any regional this weekend for which scores have been posted on the FIRST site.

But 868 was not able to repeat their feat, and finished the regional with a 106 QP average, ranked 13th.

I personally hope that stacking improves before the Championship, since it will add considerable excitement to the competition. But I remain a skeptic -- knocking 'em down is just too easy for a robot with good pushing power.

As things stand, I think the game belongs to robots that can crash the wall autonomously, sweep bins, knock down stacks, play some defense, and fight their way to the top of the hill in the final seconds. Many of these are lowriders. The best example I have seen is the Bomb Squad (Team 16).

[Ryan Albright]

well i agree the stacking didnt look to promising but we are a stacking teaom to and we got alot of crap not lining up are boxes and not having "strait stacks" see we practice everyway the boxes would land we put them any shape possible and when you look at are stack it looks unstead but it is steady and thats with picking up boxes in every direction and stacking and its up to are arm drivers (me and powers) to be abel to do it fast enough and communicate with the driver

[Greg Needel]

First of all I would like to thanks those for the kind words in support of my team, it was alot of work to get a stacker that works as many of you know and we took quite a while developing that system.....

I also believe that as this game advances stacking will be more and more important because as teams fine tune their robots and get better drive trains the fights at the top will be more aggressive and less robots will actually be on the top when the time ends. which means that the stacks will determine the winners (just my opinion)

well it was a long bus ride and I'm going to sleep. we look forward to seeing you all at nationals and at future competitions.

Greg

[Powers]

Yeah, we have practiced picking up boxes all scattered about every which way. It does take time, but we were doing it pretty effectively to make stacks of 4 from stacks of one, we could get up to 6 if we started w/ a 4 stack. Luckily we got to practice b4 shipping, which could be the problem, so we will see at UCF in 2 weeks.