[MCC] Minimum Competive Concept 2016

[CloakAndDagger]

Reading through this thread, I would say that our robot perfectly fits this bill. We made the trade off of crossing defenses and quick low goals for shooting and hanging, but sacrificed high goal shooting. Although it was effective (we qualified and advanced through michigan state finals, and finished as an 8th alliance captain at worlds), we are hoping to have a high goal shooter operational by our first offseason competition.

Although clearly effective, it does show that we need to push ourselves. I feel like that as a team as old as ours, we should be able to accomplish more than the minimum level of competitiveness, consistently, no matter how many seniors we lose, or any other circumstances that fall on us

[GreyingJay]

Our robot was basically an MCC. We kept it simple, super robust (it never broke down!), and practiced as much as we could.

KOP chassis upgraded to 6 8" pneumatic wheels.
Built narrow to go over half the ramparts without catching on the other half (this turned out to be a key design decision)!
Low bar capable.
"Roll cage" and Lexan cover to protect innards and drive under portcullis.
Capable of going over rock wall, rough terrain, and moat.
Single arm wheeled shooter to intake/shoot balls. Designed for low goal (theoretically could have done high goal with some refinement, but we didn't get this reliable enough to use - only 50% successful)
Arm mechanism also capable of handling the cheval de frise and the portcullis.
Cameras for vision tracking in auto and for driver station display.
Multiple autonomous modes (low bar low goal with and without vision, reach any defense, cross ground defense quickly, cross ground defense slowly, cross cheval de frise, cross portcullis, do nothing)

No climber. No mechanisms for sally port or drawbridge.

We practiced, practiced, practiced variations on cycles including quickly breaching, quickly grabbing boulders to deposit into the courtyard, and doing full cycles of low goals.

This was good enough to make 6th and 5th alliance captain at GTRC and North Bay, which I call a great success for our first year!

[marccenter]

Originally Posted by CloakAndDagger

Reading through this thread, I would say that our robot perfectly fits this bill. We made the trade off of crossing defenses and quick low goals for shooting and hanging, but sacrificed high goal shooting. Although it was effective (we qualified and advanced through michigan state finals, and finished as an 8th alliance captain at worlds), we are hoping to have a high goal shooter operational by our first offseason competition.

Although clearly effective, it does show that we need to push ourselves. I feel like that as a team as old as ours, we should be able to accomplish more than the minimum level of competitiveness, consistently, no matter how many seniors we lose, or any other circumstances that fall on us

CloakAndDagger:

Our goal at the beginning of the season was to qualify for MSC and we felt we could do that with our team resources (mentors, students, time, money) by building a very competitive MCC robot and were not disappointed [Team 1114 presentation makes this point about carefully evaluating your resources]

FRC3548, RoboRavens2, built a MCC robot that successfully became #3 captain at SOuthfield and then selected by #1 captain, 3604, to win the event with our sister team, FRC1188, who also built a MCC robot.

At our second FiM event at Livonia, after a few rounds of alliance captain picking each other, we found ourselves as captain of alliance#8. Our sister team, 1188, chose us as their first pick.

From this perspective I think the students considered our season very successful especially after we qualified for MSC and the World Championship at St. Louis.

One of the major things different this year was how much the KOP chassi had to change in order to be an effective MCC robot (our view). What normally takes us only two weeks to complete took us four weeks this year. Modifications to the KOP chassis included the pneumatic upgrade kit from AM, the AM front wedge plate, VEX Pro 13t CIM gear, 50 tooth trans gear swap, and new belts to go with the VEX 60T belt pulleys. We needed to resize our KOP by reducing it by one inch in order to accommodate the belt and pulleys.

As an experienced coach I know that our 10 student member team will peak at about 500 hours in the six week build period. As such, not having a shooter to reuse "off the shelf" or a climber "off the shelf" made those two items very low on the wish list. We are considering those off season projects at the present time.

One the great things about successfully competing and successfully completing a MCC robot is that the team is not stretched to its absolute limits the whole season long. This allows the coaches, students and mentors to smile and enjoy the entire season a whole lot more. This is an important element in retaining and attracting students, mentors and coaches for the next year.

[GeeTwo]

Going for those non-zero-sum ranking points was essential.

Essential items:

• Durable drive train, capable of repeatedly driving over category B & D (terrain) at a reasonable (or insanely fast) speed, reasonably low CoG (preferably within bumper zone), and park on batter
• Fast boulder pickup and reasonably short cycle time (20s), with reliable low goal scoring (or feed to a high goal shooter)
• Plenty of driver practice (10 hours minimum)

Plus three or more of these:

• reasonably reliable autonomous crossing
• Ability to drive under low bar
• Ability to cross additional category of defenses (most likely category A, portcullis/CDF)
• High goal, reasonably fast (3-5 sec extra), preferably from batter or outer works.
• Good defensive ability, with enough height to block many high-goal shooters

Above MCC, but great for WINNING regionals:

• Scaling
• Auto goal score
• Double auto goal score.

There were a number of drive systems that were workable (tank tread, pneumatic wheels, and many solid wheels). The best all-around manipulator concept was the popular intake wheels at the end of a long arm that could extend over the bumpers, hold the boulder, and feed it back out. With a little careful design, this same arm could operate the CDF and portcullis. Some sort of side rails or other system (e.g. built into the pickup arm) to make going under the portcullis a clean run is also needed.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

Plus three or more of these:

I think this missed the point of "minimum" as it gets into the realm of "do a little bit of everything". I would say one and only one of those (but remove HG from it completely). Agree with your essentials though.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I think this missed the point of "minimum" as it gets into the realm of "do a little bit of everything". I would say one and only one of those (but remove HG from it completely). Agree with your essentials though.

That is the rub. Most cannot keep themselves from trying to do too much.

[CloakAndDagger]

Originally Posted by marccenter

CloakAndDagger:

Our goal at the beginning of the season was to qualify for MSC and we felt we could do that with our team resources (mentors, students, time, money) by building a very competitive MCC robot and were not disappointed [Team 1114 presentation makes this point about carefully evaluating your resources]

FRC3548, RoboRavens2, built a MCC robot that successfully became #3 captain at SOuthfield and then selected by #1 captain, 3604, to win the event with our sister team, FRC1188, who also built a MCC robot.

At our second FiM event at Livonia, after a few rounds of alliance captain picking each other, we found ourselves as captain of alliance#8. Our sister team, 1188, chose us as their first pick.

From this perspective I think the students considered our season very successful especially after we qualified for MSC and the World Championship at St. Louis.

One of the major things different this year was how much the KOP chassi had to change in order to be an effective MCC robot (our view). What normally takes us only two weeks to complete took us four weeks this year. Modifications to the KOP chassis included the pneumatic upgrade kit from AM, the AM front wedge plate, VEX Pro 13t CIM gear, 50 tooth trans gear swap, and new belts to go with the VEX 60T belt pulleys. We needed to resize our KOP by reducing it by one inch in order to accommodate the belt and pulleys.

As an experienced coach I know that our 10 student member team will peak at about 500 hours in the six week build period. As such, not having a shooter to reuse "off the shelf" or a climber "off the shelf" made those two items very low on the wish list. We are considering those off season projects at the present time.

One the great things about successfully competing and successfully completing a MCC robot is that the team is not stretched to its absolute limits the whole season long. This allows the coaches, students and mentors to smile and enjoy the entire season a whole lot more. This is an important element in retaining and attracting students, mentors and coaches for the next year.

I'm not saying under any circumstances that an MCC robot cannot be competitive, but I am saying that we need to push ourselves further than we did this year. We have so many advantages over newer teams, and yet we find ourselves falling short last year and this year.

We get custom punched sheet metal from Russels Technical Products, in any metal we want. We have a warehouse from which we work, upon which we pay no overhead. We have an array of mentors from every field imaginable, and yet...

You guys spent 4 weeks building a competitive robot out of the KOP base. We spent as long trying to get our bases designed. We had the luxury of having 3 bases custom made to our specifications this year, and our arm as well, and instead of using this as the advantage that it was, we leaned on it as a crutch. We had all this free time, and yet, when confronted with regearing a gear box, or progressing beyond our first high goal shooting prototype, our build lead looked me straight in the eye and said it was too much work. As soon as we had preliminary arm designs done, our design team stopped showing up at the building.

We have work to do, and i and several other students plan on implementing it. In that sense, this year helped us identify the many, many shortcomings that we had, but it was still disappointing to say the least, especially knowing how much untapped potential our team has.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I think this missed the point of "minimum" as it gets into the realm of "do a little bit of everything". I would say one and only one of those (but remove HG from it completely). Agree with your essentials though.

The question is not "minimum," but "minimum competitive." The three essential items will score four boulders and possibly four crossings - not enough to regularly ensure an extra RP during quals. In order to be reasonably certain of playing in elims, you would also need more capabilities. If you look at how basic the five points I list are, doing three of them is far from "trying to do everything". I follow up with a design concept that can meet these requirements using two actuators in addition to the drive train - a design which was by teams at the low and mid-levels, and could be scaled up with additional capabilities right up to Einstein level. E.g., 330's pickup arm is an extension of this concept which could shoot high goals and even right the robot from an inverted position.

[Rachel Lim]

Originally Posted by Gogoyogert

Being a on a rookie team with only freshmen and sophomores, we really had to find the most simple robot that we would be able to build in 6 weeks. We decided to go with a low goal/ resupply robot. The chassis is an AMU14 with the 8 in. pneumatic upgrade kit. The intake and shooter was a spinning pool noodle. And that's pretty much it for functionality.

We seeded 15th at SVR, and won rookie all-star, then seeded 68th in Curie and was chosen by the 4th alliance as backup. (shout out to 5803, 3310 and 2168). I don't our robot could be competitive on Einstein but it was probably one of, if not the simplest robot that I saw at CMP.

5940's TBA page: http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/5940

This had to be one of my favorite robots of the year. Ridiculously simple and effective, and definitely a robot I'll use as an example in future years when trying to explain MCC. (It was also really tiny and I have a thing for small/cute robots.)

[BeardyMentor]

Originally Posted by Rachel Lim

This had to be one of my favorite robots of the year. Ridiculously simple and effective, and definitely a robot I'll use as an example in future years when trying to explain MCC. (It was also really tiny and I have a thing for small/cute robots.)

There are quite a few other good examples of super simple competitive robots. Some other good ones from MAR are 5624 and 4454. 5624 has not uploaded any pictures (I will ask them to do it soon) 4454 has a super simple robot that was extremely effective http://www.thebluealliance.com/team/4454 Aside from the waterjet steel wings they had to make as a result of mis reading the bumper rules, the entire thing is COTS with the exception of some simple fabricated parts that could have been made with a drill press and a hack saw

[samfruth]

I think 1710 had a really good example of an MCC bot this year. We were low, able to cross all defenses but the drawbridge independently, only shot low goals, and had a solid intake. We even scored a boulder in auto. In Newton we were able to rank 20th. Here are some example matches from champs.

Quals 57

Quals 118

[mman1506]

I'll throw in 5699, they were rank 5, 3rd alliance captain and semifinalists at GTRC with this bot https://www.facebook.com/RoboSapiens...2875678545176/

We helped them plan their strategy this year and our goal for them was to build a MCC robot. Because of their simple design they were able to complete there robot by week 4 and practice for the remaining 2 weeks of the build season. They were one of the few (only?) robots this year with an active blocking mechanism

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

The question is not "minimum," but "minimum competitive." The three essential items will score four boulders and possibly four crossings - not enough to regularly ensure an extra RP during quals.

You're still shooting too high (literally) and missing the point of this exercise. Robots with less capability than your "pick three of these" specifications have seeded high or been selected high and won events this year. There's zero way a high goal shooter is a needed component of a "minimum competitive concept". You generally need to do far less than you think to be a competitive robot, and the point of this exercise is to figure out what specific tasks you have to do to meet this criteria with little effort or machining.

[JohnFogarty]

I think a team I mentored earlier in the season fits the minimum competitive robot bill. 5632's capabilities included:

Breaching Solo every match. Which they did 100% of the time in quals matches. (Only missed one all season, if you include Elims, we had one major mechnical failure in a match that could have been fixed pre-match but the student captain didn't want to.)

Low Goaling / Ball Ferrying to the Courtyard. Moved > 5 balls a match. We literally took a PVC frame that dropped down over the bumper and bolted an andymark intake kit with some Vex Pro mechanum wheels to the front of it to achieve this.

Scaling.

Unfortunately they missed the cutoff for GA district points to go to worlds by 2 spots or so. Had I been able to keep working with them at the GA state CMP they might have gotten to Worlds.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

You're still shooting too high (literally) and missing the point of this exercise. Robots with less capability than your "pick three of these" specifications have seeded high or been selected high and won events this year. There's zero way a high goal shooter is a needed component of a "minimum competitive concept". You generally need to do far less than you think to be a competitive robot, and the point of this exercise is to figure out what specific tasks you have to do to meet this criteria with little effort or machining.

Yeah, I'm in the boat of GeeTwo is way beyond MCC and into wish listing what his robot did.


Fact - at most early events (by which I mean before week, say, 6?) you could seed high with a favorable schedule and a reliable drivetrain. Don't need to TOUCH a ball. Like, ever. So for me, a MCC (which I usually define as a robot that will play in eliminations) consists of nothing more than a drive base capable of clearing the passive defenses. A portculis/cdf arm pneumatically driven would have been wonderful but not minimum.