701's First Practice Day

[bEdhEd]

Had a lot of fun collecting boulders, practicing shooting, and damaging the moat and low bar. Some off camera stuff was portcullis lifting, CDF, ramparts, and rock wall.

It is possible that this robot may have a scaler. We have the design, but the question is whether or not the final robot will have weight for it.

[D_Price]

Very nice work on the very inventive polycord work on the intake and holy power on the shooter Batman haha

[trumpthero786]

Great work. This is basically Storm's robot with pneumatic tires! Here it is. Do you have any vision system/processing? It might help line up those shots a little more easily.

[JesseK]

Cool stuff. Gives me FOMO because of all of the snow closings around here

You'll want to add the cloth/weight bar to the low bar. Some snags are a p.i.t.a. to work through.

[Ginger Power]

What was your goal during this practice round? To score as quickly and efficiently as possible or are you still just getting a feel for the robot? It looks incredible either way!

[Drakxii]

Looks good but I will second that you should add a cloth to the low bar. It snagged us up a couple of times.

[Alpha Beta]

Love the design. The ability to get some drive practice is huge in this game. Thanks for showing the raw footage instead of just the cleaned-up, everything is smooth version. This gives a truer impression on how hard it is to hit those defensive gaps from an angle at speed. I'm sure by the time we see this robot take the competition field the skill gained by the driver will make those gaps seem a mile wide.

It looks like the driver was taking all of their shots from a position that could be prone to defense. Was that a design choice, or will future practice sessions feature pulling back to the safety of the outer-works or locking physically into the batter for the shot?

[BenGuy]

Cool, I especially like the intake. You guys went over the moat a lot in the video, but not much else, it looks like it can do the portcullis and low bar easily. Does it have trouble with any obstacles? Cool intake by the way.

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by trumpthero786

Great work. This is basically Storm's robot with pneumatic tires! Here it is. Do you have any vision system/processing? It might help line up those shots a little more easily.

I was shown a picture of your robot yesterday. I was trying to figure out which team built it, and now I know. You have the beaver tail, and we have the buck tooth.

We plan to have vision on the robot. Right now we are working on a custom case for the camera internals since the stock case is practically unmountable. Our vision was our spy for the day. The only shots shown in this video that missed were at 1:53 3:25 and 3:40. All others made it. I was actually surprised at how well we shot so early into practicing.

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

What was your goal during this practice round? To score as quickly and efficiently as possible or are you still just getting a feel for the robot? It looks incredible either way!

The goal was to score quickly and do timed cycles and also get a feel for the robot. What you see is our different drive team candidates trying out the bot. Unfortunately our controllers weren't cooperating for some of the day.

Originally Posted by JesseK

You'll want to add the cloth/weight bar to the low bar. Some snags are a p.i.t.a. to work through.

Originally Posted by Drakxii

Looks good but I will second that you should add a cloth to the low bar. It snagged us up a couple of times.

If anyone were to know about snagging it would be us! We had the low bar cloth on there until our portcullis horns on the front of the intake tore through it in the first few minutes of practice! That's why our drivers were driving backwards through the low bar. We will eventually build the back bumper and practice with some intact fabric.

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta

It looks like the driver was taking all of their shots from a position that could be prone to defense. Was that a design choice, or will future practice sessions feature pulling back to the safety of the outer-works or locking physically into the batter for the shot?

I'm fairly certain that this is not the area where we wish to shoot. There still needs to be adjustments on our angle. From earlier in the season we wanted to shoot from the batter and the outer works. I believe that this is still the plan.

Originally Posted by BenGuy

Cool, I especially like the intake. You guys went over the moat a lot in the video, but not much else, it looks like it can do the portcullis and low bar easily. Does it have trouble with any obstacles? Cool intake by the way.

Once the little horns on the front of the intake get under the portcullis, lifting it is cake. Lining up is the only hard part. The only obstacle we ever had big trouble with was the moat. That was what made us shorten the wheel base early in the season; to put the wheels closer together. We wanted to make sure that everyone trying out to drive could go over that defense.

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

Once the little horns on the front of the intake get under the portcullis, lifting it is cake. Lining up is the only hard part. The only obstacle we ever had big trouble with was the moat. That was what made us shorten the wheel base early in the season; to put the wheels closer together. We wanted to make sure that everyone trying out to drive could go over that defense.

Ok, thanks. Is there any plan for the drawbridge or sally port?

[Brandon Holley]

Always great to see a CD7 implementation - a design that shows itself almost every year in many robots!

-Brando

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

Ok, thanks. Is there any plan for the drawbridge or sally port?

This is actually a bit frustrating to me since nobody has built either of those defenses. It seems like there isn't much worry about it, regardless of asking the students to form an initiative to get those built. I hope our arms could reach the drawbridge and pull it down. I'll make sure that those defenses get built for practice sometime before our first competition!

[BenGuy]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

This is actually a bit frustrating to me since nobody has built either of those defenses. It seems like there isn't much worry about it, regardless of asking the students to form an initiative to get those built. I hope our arms could reach the drawbridge and pull it down. I'll make sure that those defenses get built for practice sometime before our first competition!

Ok, thanks. Probably last question : how long does it usually take to lift the portcullis from the time you drive up and stop to the time you start lifting? Thanks!

[bEdhEd]

Originally Posted by BenGuy

Ok, thanks. Probably last question : how long does it usually take to lift the portcullis from the time you drive up and stop to the time you start lifting? Thanks!

We only lifted the portcullis a couple times and from that I cannot give you any meaningful estimation of an average time. I can say that the lifting action itself--from being hooked onto the portcullis to lifting it above the robot--is less than a second or two based on what we tried yesterday. However, the lining up took a while and we had a couple spotters helping the driver.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by bEdhEd

This is actually a bit frustrating to me since nobody has built either of those defenses. It seems like there isn't much worry about it, regardless of asking the students to form an initiative to get those built. I hope our arms could reach the drawbridge and pull it down. I'll make sure that those defenses get built for practice sometime before our first competition!

Speaking from a similar experience I have to say making your climber do the drawbridge is a tad difficult.
Very nice robot! I love how you've incorporated a 4-wheel shooter while maintaining the 16"/14" limit.