General Alliance Strategy

[rich2202]

Seems like getting totes from the landfill is a real pain. I propose the following general strategy:

Two bots work the Chutes, and one bot works getting the Yellow Totes for coopertition.

That keeps all the bots busy, and you don't have a bot working the landfill and blocking the step.

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Seems like getting totes from the landfill is a real pain. I propose the following general strategy:

Two bots work the Chutes, and one bot works getting the Yellow Totes for coopertition.

That keeps all the bots busy, and you don't have a bot working the landfill and blocking the step.

Or depending on what robots you have and what they're effective at, you change your strategy to maximize scoring potential among the three.

[GKrotkov]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Seems like getting totes from the landfill is a real pain.

That won't work for everyone, obviously, but you've hit upon a great plan for an instance when you've got two HP stackers and a co-op specialist. There could certainly be teams that have less difficultly with the landfill than they do with the HP station.

I feel like it's all about running strategy permutations for different types of robots, and then generalizing those results on a robot role level, rather than generalizing for the entire game.

[Boltman]

We found at our event today, getting totes from the landfill to be just as fast as say getting two high from humans through the chute....both of those tasks our robot can do effectively In the end it sort of depends on design of the robot. If you have some finesse the landfill is not an issue, its mainly adjusting the totes with different orientations to a stack of at least 4 . One advantage of the landfill is its very close to the scoring platform...and plenty of totes. Human player noodle loading into bin can be done fairly easily.

In seeing what our robot/driver can do and other robot capabilities

Each robot in autonomous can get Bins totes and themselves into scoring zone (only rare ones can also stack)
Each robot can get ONE 4-5 stack + bin + noodle
Each robot can complete another 2 or 3 stack (cooperative wall or regular)

That's about it in 2:30 which is simply not a lot of time to stack jumbled totes or get from human.


So some cooperation and efficiency of movements are musts.
Going to be interesting to see whether robots will do their own thing or actively work together this year to obtain top scores.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by rich2202

Seems like getting totes from the landfill is a real pain.

Depends on what robots you've got. I've seen 3-4 Landfill specialists.

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by EricH

Depends on what robots you've got. I've seen 3-4 Landfill specialists.

While we're looking to be pretty good at receiving from the feed station. May your alliance get both.

Originally Posted by Boltman

Its going to be hard to get a lot done in 2:15. So cooperation and efficiency of movements are musts.

Definitely. In our practice today (which was basically our first "real" practice), we were able to make one decent stack (5 totes plus RC w/ litter) in just over 2 minutes. There was some indecision and a few mistakes, but making many stacks probably won't be easy even with practice.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Or depending on what robots you have and what they're effective at, you change your strategy to maximize scoring potential among the three.

Originally Posted by GKrotkov

..There could certainly be teams that have less difficultly with the landfill than they do with the HP station.

I feel like it's all about running strategy permutations for different types of robots, and then generalizing those results on a robot role level, rather than generalizing for the entire game.

I agree with both of you. We specifically designed our robot to load from the long side of a tote to efficiently work the landfill. Still TBD how much or little of a mess we'll make in four weeks.

I agree that it makes sense to do the coopertition points first, especially if the alliance has already performed a tote set or tote stack, or has been drawn a "single yellow tote" duty in the inter-alliance strategy; there are more points there than most teams will score in a minute.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Kevin Leonard

Or depending on what robots you have and what they're effective at, you change your strategy to maximize scoring potential among the three.

We were just going to drive our robot into the alliance station wall until the match ended, but now we might be changing up how we approach the teleop period.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

We were just going to drive our robot into the alliance station wall until the match ended, but now we might be changing up how we approach the teleop period.

You could choose different sections of the alliance station wall to drive into and tell scouts you have at least 10 different autonomous modes.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

You could choose different sections of the alliance station wall to drive into and tell scouts you have at least 10 different autonomous modes.

For those of you playing along at home this was a legitimate 2009 strategy.

[JesseK]

I'd argue that it's just as easy to get multple stacks from the landfill as it is to get multiple stacks from the HP station. Its level of difficulty scales with how badly an alliance shoots itself in the foot by mucking up the orientation of totes before the landfill bot gets to them.

With the right design, the right sensors/automation and some practice, I think it's plausible for a single robot to get all 18 upright totes on the landfill in a match.