Shooting a curveball?

[asid61]

Is it possible to use a sideways version of Ri3D's shooter (the 4-wheel type) to shoot a "curveball" from the corner of the field into the castle? The aperture of the shot from the corner is around 12", but if you could curve it a little you could take advantage of all 15". The corner is also braced better than any other position on the field.

[bEdhEd]

Relevant video on the Magnus Effect

This shows the magnus effect on a soccer ball, and guess what?! He's kicking from the corner of the field into the goal too! Exactly as you requested.

I'd probably design a shooter like Ri3D 1.0 but turn it 90 degrees as you say and have one side go faster than the other to give the ball a Z axis spin to get it to curve, as our soccer player in the video does with his kick.

The hard part will be to make it curve consistently every time. It could be possible with the rotated Ri3D 1.0 shooter to have a straight shot with both rollers at the same speed and have a curved shot with one side going faster to get the Z rotation. Then you'd have a shooter that does both straight and curved shots.

[RoboChair]

It is certainly possible, but I suspect you will need plenty of spin to get the effect you want.
The Magnus Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE

Edit: lol for video responses

[asid61]

Originally Posted by RoboChair

It is certainly possible, but I suspect you will need plenty of spin to get the effect you want.
The Magnus Effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE

Edit: lol for video responses

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

Relevant video on the Magnus Effect

This shows the magnus effect on a soccer ball, and guess what?! He's kicking from the corner of the field into the goal too! Exactly as you requested.

I'd probably design a shooter like Ri3D 1.0 but turn it 90 degrees as you say and have one side go faster than the other to give the ball a Z axis spin to get it to curve, as our soccer player in the video does with his kick.

The hard part will be to make it curve consistently every time. It could be possible with the rotated Ri3D 1.0 shooter to have a straight shot with both rollers at the same speed and have a curved shot with one side going faster to get the Z rotation. Then you'd have a shooter that does both straight and curved shots.

Thank you! We will make sure to test this.

[XaulZan11]

Couldn't 1114 curve the ball in 2006 with the same side fly wheel shooter in case they were getting pushed by a defender?

[GeeTwo]

Unless you're shooting around a defender or an obstruction, it's so much easier to just turn the robot a few degrees. OBTW, I expect the curveball effects to start out at a moderate level and increase as the balls get increasingly torn up. Do you plan to have sensors to evaluate how beat up your boulder is?

[asid61]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Unless you're shooting around a defender or an obstruction, it's so much easier to just turn the robot a few degrees. OBTW, I expect the curveball effects to start out at a moderate level and increase as the balls get increasingly torn up. Do you plan to have sensors to evaluate how beat up your boulder is?

You can't turn to face the goal square-on from the corner, is the problem.
Very good point on the ball health. Maybe we won't depend on this actually.

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by asid61

Thank you! We will make sure to test this.

No problem! I might actually bring this up to my team because so far our most successful shooter has been exactly what you describe: four wheels total, two vertical axles, with two wheels per axel.

They'll probably call me nuts, but since our axles are driven independently, I'll coerce our programmers to make it possible to have a curve ball setting so we can test this. I've wanted to shoot from the corner since day 1!

Post or send me video of your trials with this system. I would be totally down to see your results. I wish MVRT had a regional with us this year. it would have been neat if we both had curve ball shooters! I have a feeling that Sacramento is going to be INSANE! Maybe our teams will meet at champs.

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

I expect the curveball effects to start out at a moderate level and increase as the balls get increasingly torn up. Do you plan to have sensors to evaluate how beat up your boulder is?

This is something I was thinking about, too. Fortunately, we'll only need to change some code to achieve a curve ball with our current set up, so if this does indeed fail as a concept after testing, we wouldn't lose much in terms of building new prototypes; probably just an hour or two of time.

However it does beg the question, what is the big difference between the sideways curve you get from spinning vertically to the upward curve you get from a horizontally oriented backspin? The horizontal backspin is most commonly achieved by a single axle flywheel with a hood. The forces of the air around a ball with backspin still induces the Magnus Effect, so shouldn't we expect a depreciation in accuracy (from ball damage) for shooters that have a hood and single axle? We've seen these to be fairly accurate in past seasons when properly tuned, so why should the curve of a vertically spinning ball be any less reliable than that of a horizontally spinning ball as the balls progressively get damaged? The only difference is the relative direction of gravity acting on the ball. So the question I ask is, does the "direction" of gravity on a spinning damaged ball have a different effect depending on the axis of the ball's rotation relative to the normal vector of the ground plane (ie, the direction of the force of gravity)?

[cglrcng]

I have to agree with Edwin Luciano concerning the video (From the comments section).

Edwin Luciano 1 month ago
Hot girl. Football. Physics. What else could you ask for from a video?

Just 2 things:

Add robots doing it...And I sure would have paid a bit more attention back in Mr. Martin's Physics class in the early 1970's for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIPO3W081Hw

People yesterday were telling me the 2 boulder auto would rarely be done because of a couple of inches of worry, and you guys are talking about shooting the 10" ball with a 4 wheel shooter speeding up one side of the ball faster than the other using a curveball type arc up from the corner to increase the high goal aperture a mere 3" or less. (I agree that both can be done simply using software code probably pretty easily). Amazing what can happen if you just put physics to the test, you work with the physics, and you just don't attempt to violate the physical laws of nature.