Was the Low Bar worth it?

[Pratik Kunapuli]

Originally Posted by Anupam Goli

Not worth. We overestimated our knowledge and design capability. If I were to redo this season, I'd have us go tall.

We ultimately decided that it was possible for us to accomplish all of our goals while still designing a robot that was under 14" tall. I think going high would've made a lot of the design easier, but one of our goals was to be able to solo-breach, so we would've been forced to design a sally port/drawbridge mechanism. Looking back, I think that going low may not have been worth it, but there are some distinct advantages, like having low CG that Chris mentioned, that made it better.

[RoboChair]

Transformer bot was the way to go this year, it is not an easy task to package and make successful this design. We only built how we did because of the last 2 years of offseason robot projects. In 2015 preseason we built our first ever elevator using proper methods, and then we built our 2015 robot with an elevator using what we learned. In 2016 preseason we built an articulated arm bot, a knockoff Mammoth from 971 to play Aerial Assist at MadTown Throwback, this year we built an articulated elevator arm using what we learned. Teams that successfully implement swerve drives do so by making it work in the offseason first. Build what you know, learn before you build as much as you can.

[the_godfaubel]

From a design standpoint, it was worth it. I feel we learned how to build within a set of constraints based on preference to go under the low bar, rather than build the same high robot as usual. It was certainly a challenge that we will be more prepared for in the future.

From a performance standpoint, it was not worth it. We could have certainly done better with a taller robot. We could already clear all the defenses with little effort (minus the Drawbridge and Sally Port). There's also a lot less room to tinker under 16 inches.

[Tharioth Pillow]

I feel like it really depends on how you play.
Initially we wanted to be a bot that could literally do everything, and the low bar was included.
However, after our first competition, we realized that we could be alot more effective as a shooter bot, (if we got it working) than as a defense bot.

As it turns out, during eliminations at almost all of our competitions it helped to simply go back and forth under the low bar while popping in high goals.

I may be wrong, but I feel like having to cross a different defense would have been a secondish shorter.

[JoaquinC]

Originally Posted by RoboChair

Build what you know, learn before you build as much as you can.

I completely agree, and this was one of the main deciding factors for our team to go tall. Two members of our design team, myself included, were on the team back in 2012 and this year we essentially designed and built a Rebound Rumble robot for 10" balls that could also climb. This helped us to see what to do and what not to do based off of successes and failures of that past design.

[Littlepchan]

If we were told to build another robot from scratch, knowing what would happen, our team wouldn't second guess going under the low bar.

The low bar provided the fastest cycle time and for fast shooters like us, we did a lot of damage. Especially with our last game. We had 11 attempted shots, 9 goals, one bounce out, and the other I have no idea what happened. (we're the red bot that's cycling low bar)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jfpxuq4s16..._high.MP4?dl=0

[Stephen.Yanczura]

I think I would 100% still go low bar.

It helped us 1.) defeat 1/4 of the required-to-breach defenses ourselves quickly (1 RP) and also 2.)establish our two ball auto. IMO most importantly though, it 3.) helped us control our own destiny in quals due to fast cycles allowing us to score a ton of boulders (2 more RP) which then let us pick another shooter during alliance selection to take some of the heat off us both in elims.

I was a huge proponent (shouting, yelling, etc) of a low bar robot from day 1 but I also recognized that it was going to take all of our "design horsepower" to package everything into that machine effectively and I warned the team. Every year we have a hardcore design challenge or three that tax our resources above all else:

12 - swerve and targeting
13 - shooter
14 - shooter
15 - swerve, weight reduction and automation
16 - packaging capabilities into low bar machine

I would however choose not to use tank tracks again. Not because they were bad or anything but I think they 1.) drove design decisions and 2.) limited our performance for 3.) a perceived benefit that could have been EASILY obtained by smart wheel choice.

That said, it was a great season.

[TAlholm]

For the teams that were the top scoring low bar bots, yes. A lot of other teams could have made an amazing shooter had they not chose the low bar.

[natejo99]

I think the low bar was worth it. Our team values being extremely versatile on the field, and designing for the low bar helped us accomplish just that. Besides allowing us to score points through the low bar, it forced us to keep a low CG which helped us in playing defense. I was originally against it, but if I could go back and redesign our bot, I'd keep our low bar capability.

[fargus111111111]

Having been a major low-bar-capable supporter from the beginning I'm very glad we decided to go low.

One thing, which I was unsure of at first, but wouldn't do without now as a driver, is our spring loaded climber arm, it was light, and it stuck up high so I NEVER lost sight of our robot, but when going under the low bar there was nothing to think about bringing down. It flopped down and back up all by it self.

This is our lightest robot ever, I think, and that is largely due to the limited space we had to put stuff, it was really nice to see the scale say 100.4 at inspection instead of 119.8 like last year. I gave us assurance that if we needed to add something it was not a problem as far as weight was concerned.

Honestly if we had chosen to not do the low bar we would have basically built our 2012 bot with pneumatic wheels or tracks and a larger ball path. Idk, but I feel like that may have removed some of the learning we get every year from the challenge.

I loved having tracks this year PID+low CG made them handle like a dream and we never got stuck on a defense. A taller bot may not have been as stable on the tracks. (but honestly it is hard to tip a 14 lbs battery that is 1.5 in off the floor in the center of the bot)

As already mentioned the ability to fit it in the back of a hatchback/SUV is very convenient for demonstrations.

[bimbunky]

I would add 1678 to your list because of their extending shooter and double jointed arm.

[cptopher]

Yes. Helped 3534 with fast cycles and strategy options during matches. We spent a lot of time up front in cad working out the simple geometry to extend from 14" to the scale bar. So many experts said it couldn't be done. We took that challenge and we were among the top scalers in Michigan. Our high shooter was more limited by programming problems than the low bar capable design. Our best season ever and first trip to Worlds was a great payoff.

[BeardyMentor]

for us, absolutely. I can also see how for some teams it makes sense to forgo the low bar in favor of simplifying reaching other objectives. The ability to forget about the category C defenses and still get the breach without the aid of alliance members was a huge thing for us.

We also gave up a lot to do this though. We did not attempt the high goal or climbing in favor of having more practice time and a simpler more robust design.

[3072Cap]

Was it worth it? To me, yes. A couple of our matches, we were the only robot, or moving robot, on the field. We could do A, B, and D defenses, no problem, every time. That left us with doing the LB to finish a breach. Sure we could design something to make us do C class, but I liked the low CG more than being able to do C class from the Neutral Zone. Our team listed goals that we hoped to accomplish this season, and our LB bot did them all. I wouldn't change a thing.

[Ngang]

Nope. The low bar wasn't one of our best strategies. It was definitely good to have a lower center of gravity for the driving obstacles, but ultimately we ran the other defenses more than the low bar.

Our team actually had to rebuild the electronics board three times because the size constraints gave us so little room to work with. In addition, the fact that we had all these parts all over each other meant that in order to fix one part, we had to dismantle another section to gain access to it.

Even so, the robot only fit under the low bar when perfectly aligned, so we ended up bashing in parts of the frame during close matches.

We learned a lot this year, especially in regards to building under a size constraint. All in all, we built a good bot, it's just that limiting the size so severely for the sake of ONE obstacle may not have been the best call. I think we went with it just to see if we could, especially with all the low bar hype from some other teams.