Getting the Totes Right Side Up from the Chute Door

[SoccerTaco]

Hi, there are a few techniques that I've seen.

Some teams are building ramps, which they tether to their robot, so the totes slide nicely into the field.

Some teams push a tote - often one of the yellow totes - up to the chute door. (yes, chute door) The long side of the tote is against the wall. This creates a ramp of sorts, and totes generally bounce over the "ramp tote" and land upright on the field. It does not seem 100%, but it works pretty well.

I've not seen this myself, and my team didn't play with it since we have a slide built into our robot, but I've read that some teams will, as the tote is sliding down the chute, lower the door onto the top of the tote before it exits the chute - and are able to bump it in such a way as to help it land upright.

Hope that helps!

Steve

[Anthony Galea]

We have an actuating claw for our lift, so we line up at the feeder station, and close the claw on the tote before it hits the ground, open, and it lands flat. It has worked every time, providing we are lined up with the chute door.

[SeanFitz]

What we do is set our robot a little ways away from the door, and then just let the tote fall naturally. The front hits our robot and the rest falls back onto the ground level and ready to be picked up. It might be a little slower than using a ramp, but it saves weight and has yet to fail us once.

[rich2202]

Our team discovered this by accident. If our grabber is closed, the tote will land on the grabber. Then the driver opens the grabber, and the tote lands on the floor right side up. Then the driver can grab the tote correctly.

[Pretzel]

Our team has a method that I haven't seen many others use in the form of a conveyor belt through the middle of our robot. We load totes into the back of the robot and they slide out to the front where our stacking mechanism is located. We also have two rails that actuate in and out (one on each side of the tote) to re-align the tote if we didn't back up to the chute perfectly square.

[GuyM142]

Thanks for all the comments!
But I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

[Neima]

Originally Posted by GuyM142

Thanks for all the comments!
But I guess I didn't explain my intention well enough,
What I intended was getting the tote right side up without touching the robot (only the carpet)
You can see it very well in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=45&v=oiOZN4G4OxI
Look at the bottom right feeder (red side). Team 548 get the tote right side up every time.

I don't know how they are doing that in that video but at 10k lake I saw a team able to do that too. Their human player would barely put the tote in the chute then let go of it and open the chute door before the tote would hit the door. This allowed the tote to gain enough speed to not tip on its side. I asked the head ref about it and he said it was a grey area.

[msaunders]

I was intrigued also.

I am uploading some close up videos from Bedford.

2015 Bedford FRC548 HP Tote Loading
548 does not use a ramp. I think I saw one tote that did not land flat.

2015 Bedford FRC 2137 HP Tote Loading

[Brandon_L]

I've seen a few human players smack the tote with the chute door by slamming it down on the back end of the tote as it goes through, and it kind of lifts the front end of the tote enough for it to land right.

Edit: yeah, same method as previous post ^

[hectorcastillo]

Hi, as far as getting the tote to land perfectly without it touching anything but the chute, I'd say it comes pretty much down to luck. Our human tried a lot of different things like angling the tote in the chute and hitting the tote with the door on the way out to slow it down. None of these techniques yielded a desirable outcome. :/

However, we are able to get the totes out of the chute perfectly every time without touching them with our robot. Well, technically it does touch our robot. We built a table that sits in front of the chute that catches the totes and lets them land perfectly every time. This table is tethered to our robot so we can move independently from it #teamtether. We call it "El Stackador"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8z...ew?usp=sharing

Now, obviously this won't work for you if you are usually picking up from the ground. What you might want to try is building just the top of the table and sitting it on the ground where the totes land, possibly with an open front if your robot sucks the totes in from the front. I know team 3310 has a similar mechanism that acts like the top of our table, but it fold down from the front of their robot.

Good luck,
-3481

[Ginger Power]

I've seen teams slam the chute door down on the back end of the tote as it's exiting the chute. It seemed to be effective in getting the tote to land in a nice orientation.

[Siri]

It's not luck; it's practice. There are actually [at least] two main methods, one faster than HPs typically go and one slower. Neither involves violating G5, G6 or any other rules. There's no visible delay in overall throughput between them, though in reality there probably is some incremental difference. Personally I find the slower approach easier and more consistent--actually, I had trouble making totes land on end that way--but I know people who can do the faster approach all day long.

Actually, on looking at the 548 video, I'm not sure he's doing either approach I mentioned. (Though he may be; it's hard to tell.) So maybe there's more than two approaches.

[SciBorg Dave]

Our human player ( Cameron) has done 100% at some Districts of the totes landing flat. Other teams have filmed him with slow motion cameras to see how he does it. I told the other teams to ask Cameron for some lessons no secrets in FIRST. Now we will tell you Cameron taps the last 10-15% of the tote as it is leaving the chute with the door. If you want lessons you must come to the Northwest. You can go to http://pnwfirst.org/
we are at District 4 , District 7 and Championship. Cameron is on team 4061. Good luck.

[Jacob4564]

Something that our human player has extensively practiced is letting the tote slide halfway through the chute then bringing the door on top of the tote slowing it down, then letting the tote go. We found that since the totes weren't going so fast they tended to land right side up.

[Qbot2640]

Many posts are indicating the same thing we do - rather than "multi-quote" them all - I just wanted to add:

The sharp but gentle tap on the back side of the tote with the chute door is what we've done, and I would venture to guess that we're 100% when this is done right. The times the tote has landed improperly were because of one of the two following faults: If you tap too hard or too long, you slow the tote too much and it lands on end....if you miss entirely and do not tap at all, it comes out erratically and will likely end up on it's side. SO...

Quick tap and lift (we've found that using both hands on opposite handles of the door is the best control) on the back portion of the tote...not so much to slow it down, as to "control" it's departure from the chute...is the key.

And "yes" to both - "practice, practice, practice" and "all chutes react differently". Our "practice field" style chute that we got from our kickoff field works perfectly, landing totes flat with no intervention at all...it had us at a major disadvantage in our first event, expecting the same results in competition that we had in the garage.