Low-Bar capable robot discussion

[swaxman12345]

Hello everyone,

Now that we're 4 weeks into competition season, I wanted to reach out and see how people would answer the following question:

Do you think that the focus among many teams on being able to cycle through the low bar has been beneficial or detrimental to the game so far this year?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Karthik say he was scared of how many teams said they were going for the low bar? Personally, I haven't see a significant bottleneck at the low bar at either competition I've been at this season. What do you think?

[BrennanB]

Another thread about this....



Low bar issues is the fact that that it puts a serious constraint on your robot, not that during the game it causes issues.

/thread

[Moretti]

I'd say neither, It's allowed robots that don't have advanced functionalities to score a decent amount of points but at the same time many teams have limited themselves to about a 1 foot height. It is arguable that teams that limited themselves to that constraint had to get more creative (which they have) when designing their robot.
Detrimental? No.
Beneficial? Arguably yes.

[Type]

I think it helps with cycle times. If anyone watched the St Joe competition in Michigan, 3620, the Average Joes had a low bar robot and if RoboZone was right, their alliance cycled 11 balls into the tower. I think some of this had to do with being able to go under the low bar to quickly grab a bar and shoot. The top 4 (or at least top 2) alliances at St Joe were filled with only low bar robots. Actually, I think there were only 2 robots at the entire event that weren't low bar robots. I don't think its hurt anything, but just made it more interesting.

[GeeTwo]

As most robots are capable of driving over at least one other defense, I have not seen the low bar become a bottle neck.

Several (though not all) of the robots that obviously did not design to go under the low bar also seem to be more likely to tortuga on the category B and D defenses via tipping due to their high center of gravity. While there are certainly teams that made a mistake each way, I believe that more teams made a poor decision by deciding not to do the low bar than by deciding to do the low bar.

[kmusa]

Originally Posted by Moretti

... It is arguable that teams that limited themselves to that constraint had to get more creative (which they have) when designing their robot.
Detrimental? No.
Beneficial? Arguably yes.

I certainly was impressed with what TANX (3003) did with that constraint.

[ctt956]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

As most robots are capable of driving over at least one other defense, I have not seen the low bar become a bottle neck.

Several (though not all) of the robots that obviously did not design to go under the low bar also seem to be more likely to tortuga on the category B and D defenses via tipping due to their high center of gravity. While there are certainly teams that made a mistake each way, I believe that more teams made a poor decision by deciding not to do the low bar than by deciding to do the low bar.

Agreed. From the competitions I've seen so far this year, taller robots tend to get stuck/flip when crossing anything other than Category C, with the exception of the Portcullis. Some of them also seem to be a bit slower, but maybe that's because the tall 'bots have high goal shooters, so they spend most of their time trying to shoot high goals.

[Sperkowsky]

Our team personally designed originally with the low bar as a big part of our strategy however, after seeing the shear amount we opted to break it a bit. In the end we could go under the low bar. Backwards and slowly....

Which in my opinion was perfectly fine. We used the low bar one match because we were the only team capable but, every other match there was a team who preferred using it.

However, the low bar allowed us to never have tip issues and also allowed us to transport our robot around with any normal car which is great for demos. The low bar saved this game and not too many people know it.