The Wedge Bot!!!

[Parks]

Has anyone realized the amazingness of a wedge in this game. I am the driver on team 610 and we were at the Canadian Regional. With our cow-catcher/wedge, NOBODY could mess with us. Not even a team with a 6 motor drive system could push us around. We pushed them, and everyone.

The only problem is with the incessant scrutiny I received from the refs, after I accidentally flipped a bot in the first round.

Has anyone else had such success with such a design?

To see a pic of the bot, see the thread:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...350#post140350

[Gadget470]

sorry to be the bearer of statistcal truth..

You folks seeded 31st.. not too great of a showing. But you did get picked for alliances which is always good. (We didn't ). I looked through the scores you guys had and they all were rather low. I havn't seen matches so I don't know how well you were really pushing people around, but it seems like it didn't help you much.

Don't get me wrong, you guys have a cool bot, as I have said in the image discuss, but it's not seeming to perform as stellar as your post comes across as.

NOBODY could mess with us

but you guys lost 1/2 your matches....

But hey.. you guys won Chairman's award, definitly something to be proud of. If you are going to be raising your tail feathers, I think it should be about that more than your neat looking bot.

[T967]

Has anyone realized the amazingness of a wedge in this game.

Ummmmm yeah that may be true on flat ground, but on the ramp if a robot is on top and hits your ramp when your goin' up, all that's going to happen is you won't move.

Gravity is the most amazing thing in this game.

[Parks]

Scores were low because we were too aggressive.
And nobody did push us. Three times we were paired with dead bots, that didn't help the situation. One of our lowest scoring matches was against team 188, another strong pusher. The score was 14 to 9 because of the high aggression in the game.

Just wait until nationals to see the power of the wedge.

[gumby]

Originally posted by Gadget470
sorry to be the bearer of statistcal truth..

You folks seeded 31st.. not too great of a showing. But you did get picked for alliances which is always good. (We didn't ). I looked through the scores you guys had and they all were rather low. I havn't seen matches so I don't know how well you were really pushing people around, but it seems like it didn't help you much.

Don't get me wrong, you guys have a cool bot, as I have said in the image discuss, but it's not seeming to perform as stellar as your post comes across as.

but you guys lost 1/2 your matches....

But hey.. you guys won Chairman's award, definitly something to be proud of. If you are going to be raising your tail feathers, I think it should be about that more than your neat looking bot.

We were 5 and 3. THat's not half last I checked.

The reasons we were low?
1. We had a faulty joystick for the first 3 (Parks, confirm this) matches on Friday.
2. Electrical short caused the voltage on the battery to drop to 6V in our second match.
3. We were paired with a couple of essentially dead robots.

When we were able to use our robot for it's best function, it performed admirably. Parks is quite right in saying that nobody could push us around, I don't think I saw it lose a battle all weekend. Some bad luck cost us better seeding, which is unfortunate, but if we can keep up the solid play that we had for the last half of the weekend, we should do well in Houston.

[Parks]

Another thing I must say...
the advantage of the wedge is simply in holding ground. We are such a defensive bot. I would simply park in front of our stack. Rarely did I even have to push at all on the throttle to hold our ground. Often it was easy to push the robot on the other side of the field.
The wedge only enhances our powerful drive system. But I am convinced that it was a good choice for one of our 4 subsystems

[T967]

Does your wedge move? Example: if your on the ramp will it swivel down to block the any up coming robots?

[Jeff Rodriguez]

refs don't like wedge bots because they can flip other robots so easily. Most robots have a flat surface that they push with.

Example:
At philly i was watching 522 like a hawk when they put their wedge thing down, because they could have pulled it up while it was under another bot. (don't get me wrong, i love 522s bot and thought they were the best there)

618 was also a wedge but it didn't go all the way to the ground. they were also very good

316 was also a wedge and didn't go all the way to the ground.

wedge bots are great for holding position on top of the ramp. Other robots just drive onto them and lose traction. They aren't so good for getting into position on the ramp. If they get under another bot all they have to do is drive forward to tip the other one over.

when i'm watching wedge bots i watch the robot and the drivers. If i see the robot going forward and the drivers/mentor saying 'forward' or 'go' or getting excited then i have to make up my mind quick. Luckily the wedges at philly were very good about tipping. Most tipping happened during auto mode, there's nothing that can be done then.

[Parks]

ARGH!
the joystick and I had a little discussion later (the topic was of the smashy smashy variety).

The reason I started this thread was to see if anyone else has realized the power you can get out of a simple wedge to enhance a strong drive system. Not really to get into a discussion about our disspointingly poor results at the competition.

[gumby]

Originally posted by Ogre
refs don't like wedge bots because they can flip other robots so easily. Most robots have a flat surface that they push with.

Example:
At philly i was watching 522 like a hawk when they put their wedge thing down, because they could have pulled it up while it was under another bot. (don't get me wrong, i love 522s bot and thought they were the best there)

618 was also a wedge but it didn't go all the way to the ground. they were also very good

316 was also a wedge and didn't go all the way to the ground.

wedge bots are great for holding position on top of the ramp. Other robots just drive onto them and lose traction. They aren't so good for getting into position on the ramp. If they get under another bot all they have to do is drive forward to tip the other one over.

when i'm watching wedge bots i watch the robot and the drivers. If i see the robot going forward and the drivers/mentor saying 'forward' or 'go' or getting excited then i have to make up my mind quick. Luckily the wedges at philly were very good about tipping. Most tipping happened during auto mode, there's nothing that can be done then.

Ya, we accidentally flipped one robot over. That was in our first match however, and it didn't happen again after that, even though we used it in every single match after.

Most of the tipping at the Canadian Regional was when tall robots were on the ramp. I don't think I saw any intentional tipping at all though. I did see two get back up after tipping... One was flipped by their partner, and the other had an arm that they managed to flip back up with.

[Parks]

for simplicity, go here to see the wedge
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pi...gle&picid=4154

We never use it on the ramp, that would be stupid. Practically inviting a flip. And a flip with a wedge is disqualified a lot easier than a flip without a wedge. It is more of a cow catcher really - except we catch bots.

[Gadget470]

guys, please don't take my comments as a slam.

I know full well that dead alliances often are the destruction of great teams. (this is my 4th year with FIRST, i've seen it happen to some of the best).

I'm speaking from a purely statistical standpoint because I did not see your bot. I'm sure you guys were picked for alliances because you had a tough bot despite rank.

I'm surprised I havn't seen you guys posting about winning Chairman's though, I would be ecstatic if we did.

The reason I started this thread was to see if anyone else has realized the power you can get out of a simple wedge to enhance a strong drive system.

A wedge (or inclined plane) is one the basic "Simple Machines." A simple machine when applied to the right situation can work wonders. I agree a wedge can have great advantages as I've seen at GLR and watching matches. The problem of a wedge though is that they take a long space over shorter height to be the most effective. This is where one of the higher points in your bot comes in. You guys found a good way to implement the wedge while still keeping other functionality.
Sorry if I sounded harsh in my first post, was not my intention.

[Simeon]

HEY 610!

It's 820
congratuating u on winning chairman's at CDN regionals!

heh! u guys played well with us! ^_^

yeah
funny how the highest score in the qualifying matches was with us as well! haha...

the thing with flipping is that the wedges aren't the main things that flip.
it's the giraffes that sit on the ramp and get pushed by another one.
Even tho our robot had quite a low torque.. we still flipped over 2 robots...

[Todd Derbyshire]

wedges are great this year for example our arm has a little 90 degree angle on it at the tip so we can extend it out on the top of the ramp and put our arm out in front of us to hold off teams by lefting our arm and making teams lose traction. This method is like forklifting. Our robot has the capability of doing this however so far in competion we have not done this for fear of the action being taken as either tipping or malicious. So far our drive system is strong enough that we don't need too do this. We consistantly pushed teams off the ramp at BAE and held our ground on the ramp.

[jonathan lall]

Originally posted by Parks
Has anyone realized the amazingness of a wedge in this game. I am the driver on team 610 and we were at the Canadian Regional. With our cow-catcher/wedge, NOBODY could mess with us. Not even a team with a 6 motor drive system could push us around. We pushed them, and everyone.

If you're referring to us, there are a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we weren't really pushed around by you guys at all...

And intentional or not, I would sort of expect intense scrutiny by the refs after flipping a robot with my function device. What purpose did it serve other than to interact with robots?

On another note, massive props on the Chairman's Award, you guys deserved it for sure. Bring that trophy home with pride!