Top 5 robots in each state

[thatprogrammer]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

Disregarding my team due to my own internal bias. I would put 233 above 2383 I would actually put 1592 above them as well.

I would go:
233
1592
2383
744/1523 depending on how you are judging.

233 was consistently making atleast 2 stacks so was 1592. 2383 when last I saw them was limited to 2 stacks max a match.

Ok, I hadn't seen too much of 233, and they weren't as big in iri as I thought they would be. I put 2383 above 1592 because I felt their auto was a bit more consistent.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

When talking about MN powerhouses this year, many people miss 2883 FRED. They were a powerhouse up at Lake superior and they were a powerhouse that captained our Finalist alliance at the MN state championship this year.

FRED's improvements for state included adding a tethered ramp for state. With the tethered ramp, it allowed them to be capable of creating 2 capped/noodled 6 stacks. Unfortunately, there seems to be no video evidence of this(for some reason only a couple matches of the MN state championship were recorded). They also had a can grabber that they could take out of needed.

Here are some more robots that deserve to be mentioned/considered when talking about the top 5-10 for MN: 1816 and 4778.

1816 was picked 5th overall in curie, which is very impressive, and their can burgulars were always consistent. 4778 also made some improvements before MN state, they were a tote bot that put 15+ totes on the scoring platform almost every match at state.

2883 in a match at MSHSL. They would have easily had 2 full stacks if that pesky 4536 team hadn't needlessly knocked over an RC.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

2883 in a match at MSHSL. They would have easily had 2 full stacks if that pesky 4536 team hadn't needlessly knocked over an RC.

Thanks for finding a match of them.

Yeah.. 2883 has trouble righting sideways cans. Our robot has trouble with that as well.

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Thanks for finding a match of them.

Yeah.. 2883 has trouble righting sideways cans. Our robot has trouble with that as well.

Definitely not a unique problem. As part of our offseason modifications we just gave up the ability to right a can altogether.

[jajabinx124]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

Definitely not a unique problem. As part of our offseason modifications we just gave up the ability to right a can altogether.

Yeah, a very common problem this year.

Did you guys give up on the ability to right a RC because you guys thought it would be too time consuming and too annoying to align the robot in position to up right the RC?

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by jajabinx124

Yeah, a very common problem this year.

Did you guys give up on the ability to right a RC because you guys thought it would be too time consuming and too annoying to align the robot in position to up right the RC?

The changes we wanted to make to our intake subsystem required those extra flaps on our elevator to get out of the way. We looked into alternate ways of righting cans (the 2056 and the 1114 methods), but couldn't make either one quite work with our machine. We figured we weren't missing out on much for the reasons you said - if we had to take the time to line up and right the can, chances are we weren't gonna be able to put that on top of a stack as well in the same match.

The IRI rule changes also convinced us there were enough cans upright out there that it would be fine, so we made sure to work on our autonomous to minimize the chances of a can falling over at the beginning of a match.

[GeeTwo]

Nobody has posted for Louisiana yet. The clear top LA robot was our alliance partner, 3039, Wildcat of Destrehan. Leaving out teams with which I have an association, either through personal or family involvement, it's not too difficult to pick four more. Their relative ranks are close enough that I'll sort them by team number rather than by rank:
1912, Team Combustion, across town in Slidell.
3606, Bear Metal, Baton Rouge
3616, Team Phenomenon, Lafayette.
4085, Team Borg, New Orleans

And for those who may not know how to pronounce city names in Louisiana:
Destrehan: all short vowels. Primary emphasis on first syllable, secondary on last. DES tru Han.
Slidell: long i, short e. Emphasis on first syllable. SLAI dehl.
Baton Rouge: It's French. Bah - toh(n) Roozh
Lafayette: Lafay rhymes with "taffy". Primary emphasis on first syllable, secondary emphasis on last: LAHF - ee - Et
New Orleans: Emphasis on the middle syllable, no long "e"s anywhere. A city this big accepts a bit of variation. Acceptable pronunciations can be found in the songs "New Orleans ladies", or "Walking to New Orleans", or the first mention in House of the Rising Sun (There is a house in New Orleans), but definitely NOT the later lyric in House of the Rising Sun that rhymes with "SEWED my NEW blue JEANS." New Orleanians are generally accepting of people from out of town, but "NEW orLEENS" may rank you below (Atlanta) Falcons or (Chicago) Bears fans!

[The other Gabe]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

3606, Bear Metal, Baton Rouge

no, it's BearMetal. 2046 is Bear Metal

[fargus111111111]

Originally Posted by Zflash

Harsh... we dropped a 6 stack in one practice match and now our entire robot is unstable. We did 5s with cans and noodles fast by utilizing our intakes and ramp. Fast enough and consistent enough to take the number one seed without tipping over again. While we did break in elims it was fixed in between matches. You must be referring to us dropping a stack in the last match. Our drivers were going faster than usual to make up for the fact that our partner 283 broke the arm they used to cap their stacks. We knew we had to move faster to close the point gap to advance and it didn't work.

Based on individual robot performance and not what they did as part of an alliance I believe Billfred has the rankings right.

Your 5s were incredibly good, that is why I said that your mechanism was good, as it always is and you had matches where, while you did not drop any stacks you did tip up off your back wheels for a second. I am a huge fan of y'all's, always have been. Personally, I would have loved to have seen you in the finals of Peachtree, it would have been a much harder match to win. On the flip side of the stability coin, at least you never fell over. To be fair, I would have ranked you #1 if not for the few stability issues I saw. This game relied so much on being fast and stable that just a few wobbles knocks down the rankings. One other thing that would have boosted any robot in my rankings is auto, can robbers or 3 tote stack. You had the mechanical ability to do a 3 tote auto easily, but I never saw it.

Quick Edit: Perhaps it was nervousness or trying to go too fast and the drivers got calmed down by champs. I would have gone to watch some of the other SC teams but some little demon got into our robot while it was in the shipping crate and we had to fix multiple things at champs. (which was a surprise because we did not have to fix anything during both regionals)

[fargus111111111]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Several teams built strong cases for 3-5--283 (which is a new veteran team, never dormant), 343, 1102, 1876, 4073. All were good in their own domains, though only 4073 left with a banner.

Ummmm, 343 has 2 banners from this year and 283 has 1.

[evanperryg]

Originally Posted by MARS_James

Disregarding my team due to my own internal bias. I would put 233 above 2383 I would actually put 1592 above them as well.

I would go:
233
1592
2383
744/1523 depending on how you are judging.

233 was consistently making atleast 2 stacks so was 1592. 2383 when last I saw them was limited to 2 stacks max a match.

You guys were AMAZING at IRI. If I recall, you were the first to get 3 stacks out of the landfill, putting to shame many of the elite landfill bots who underperformed for most of the event. My personal ranking for Florida would go like this:

1. 179
2. 1592, for their impressive landfill abilities. Those claw shooter can pullers were pretty cool too, too bad they didn't get to use them much
3. 233, a strong team as always with consistency out of the feeder and some potential at the landfill.
4. 2383, for a pretty good robot overall. Their consistency was questionable, but they generally performed very well.
5. 744, they were pretty good at IRI. I didn't really believe in that whole 2-tote-at-a-time thing but they showed it was doable, and could be productive to an alliance.

I don't know anything about 1523, but I've heard good stuff about them.

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by tindleroot

A better way to rate robots IMO would be by qualifying rank at events. This shows a more accurate rank of robot ability.

This year in particular, qualifying rank was NOT a good measure because coop points were so important. The better initial ranking is OPR net of coop OPR. But then you still need to look at the components of the OPR. In addition, can grabbing as the only true defensive act comes into play as well.

[Kpchem]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Colorado
...
#2: 4499, the Highlanders. An excellent landfill robot, and a spectacular team.
...

I just wanted to take a moment to add onto this. I've worked the Colorado Regional for the past four years and ever since 4499 joined the region they've been one of my favorite teams. They build solid robots that fill roles that other teams didn't focus on, and they execute it well. At a regional dominated by two feeder station robots (1619 and 1730), it was fun to see a solid landfill bot (and I would have loved to see the three of them play together).

And then on top of all of that, they're a fantastic team as evidenced by 2 RAS awards in 2013, Engineering Inspiration from Inland Empire in 2014, and then the Chairman's Award from Colorado in 2015.

They may be young, but this is definitely a team to watch out for in the future.

[NelaM]

Originally Posted by Kpchem

I just wanted to take a moment to add onto this. I've worked the Colorado Regional for the past four years and ever since 4499 joined the region they've been one of my favorite teams. They build solid robots that fill roles that other teams didn't focus on, and they execute it well. At a regional dominated by two feeder station robots (1619 and 1730), it was fun to see a solid landfill bot (and I would have loved to see the three of them play together).

And then on top of all of that, they're a fantastic team as evidenced by 2 RAS awards in 2013, Engineering Inspiration from Inland Empire in 2014, and then the Chairman's Award from Colorado in 2015.

They may be young, but this is definitely a team to watch out for in the future.

Thanks Kevin for the in depth post. It means a lot to us that someone has been keeping up with us; we're glad our efforts to be different haven't gone unnoticed. Thank you so much for volunteering. Your kind words have an impact on our team.

[niklas674]

If I had to take a shot at California, it would go something like this...
1. 254 " The Cheesy Poofs"
2. 1678 "Citrus Circuits"
3. 3476 "Code Orange"
4. 971 "Spartan Robotics"
5. 1671 "Buchanan Bird Brains"
Some honorable mentions...
701" The Robovikes"
2085 " The Robodogs"
973 " The Greybots"
330 " The Beach Bots"