Pre-Ship Scrimage Results

[Andy A.]

I am very interested in small ball handling 'bots. How did they do? How did they do it? Were there any notable ball handling 'bots?

Also, out of curoisity, did any teams have a good way of getting the yellow balls on to the field instead of just nocking them off the tee?

-Andy A.

[Ianworld]

A few questions:
How effective were wings for aidiing in pushing balls into the corral?
What did bots with many capabilities focus on?
Did people push balls out of the ring on purpose and to what effect?
Were goal grabbers necessary for pulling goals out of corners?
Were robots that were holding a big ball attacked because they were valuble?

~Ian

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Ogre

Were alot of people able to get up the ramp?
By ramp, I assume you mean the tiny stairs. Only if they're robot was narrow enough to get around the staionary goal.

Do you mean to tell me that the teams who got up on the platforms were only the ones who went up the tiny steps and were small enough to go around the stationary goal?? None came in from the sides??

How did the hangers hang??? Did they go up the platform(s) and then hang or just reach in for the bar from the carpeted level?

[Tom Bottiglieri]

no one at utc grabbed the bar from the ground. There were only a few teams that could hang succesfully EVERY round. Aces high's bot was insane. Look out for them this year.

[Jon K.]

Originally Posted by ToMMan b182

no one at utc grabbed the bar from the ground. There were only a few teams that could hang succesfully EVERY round. Aces high's bot was insane. Look out for them this year.

Another bot to look out for this year is 782. They hang like crazy and they are good at it. They are able to get around the stationary or go up the big step.

[SarahB]

Originally Posted by Ianworld

A few questions:
How effective were wings for aidiing in pushing balls into the corral?

Most attempts to push balls into the coral with wings or just with the robot weren't very sucessful at UTC. From my observation, the only teams that got more than a couple balls in were those who picked up the balls then spit them out to the human player. Also, a lot of teams got 10 point penalties for breaking the plane of the ball shute so I think that discouraged teams from trying to push in balls.

Were goal grabbers necessary for pulling goals out of corners?

Most of the teams at UTC only moved the goals by pushing them. However, since so many teams were trying to block the human player shutes with the movable goals, I think it would be very benificial to have a goal grabber so you can reopen your ball coral.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

Do you mean to tell me that the teams who got up on the platforms were only the ones who went up the tiny steps and were small enough to go around the stationary goal?? None came in from the sides??

How did the hangers hang??? Did they go up the platform(s) and then hang or just reach in for the bar from the carpeted level?

No. There were a few teams that went up the 6" step, but it was much slower than the tiny stairs. Ther were also alot of teams that attempted going up the 6" step but didn't make it.

All the hanging bots had some sort of arm that extended up with a hook on the end. Like this and this. Both of those were on the platform when they reached for the bar.
There was one robot that tried reaching from the carpet (178). When then hooked the bar and started putting weight on their hook, it snapped off.

[uzneko]

just curious, did any of the other scrimmages besides DC have the evil small balls of doom? or were they closer to the official size that FIRST put out?
because in DC that seemed to be one of the biggest problems for everyone... running over the majorly deflated evilness

Did any of the other scrimmage groups have that problem too, or are we just 'special'?

[Korbin]

at AZ we had what I think are the standard size balls, but I did not see a team that did not have trouble herding them due to how easy it is to ride up on them.

I know that a few teams were able to handle the 2x ball, but that did them very little good without any balls....

the thing that i learned most from the invitational this year was that we, and most other teams mis judged the importance of the different ways of playing the game. We thought that anyone with a moving base would be able to herd balls, but that is defently not true. the only ones that will be succesfull at it is those that actually gather them. These teams will be the ones to go far in the alliance pickings because the teams that went all out will be able to hang and cap, and do all that, but wont dominate like they thought without at bot that gathers.

so the way i se things working out is this:
the teams that do everything will end up doing one thing (befor the alliance picking), wich will probubly be hanging, because that is the only thing that you can do by yoursealf without a gathering alliance partner. and when the gather bots pick them because they can cap, and hang well, then they will cap when the big goal is full, and then go to hang. This is the alliance them that will win in every reagenal i bet.

furthermore I am predicting that all of the bots that gather balls will be picked, or picking. This is because that robot design was considers less ambitious by most teams, and they decided to build a hanging-2x handling bot.

[sanddrag]

The highest scoring bot I saw was one that parked under the ball dumb got ALL the balls, drove over to the ball chute, and deposited them all.

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Ogre

No. There were a few teams that went up the 6" step, but it was much slower than the tiny stairs. Ther were also alot of teams that attempted going up the 6" step but didn't make it.

All the hanging bots had some sort of arm that extended up with a hook on the end. Like this and this. Both of those were on the platform when they reached for the bar.
There was one robot that tried reaching from the carpet (178). When then hooked the bar and started putting weight on their hook, it snapped off.

Thanks Ogre!!

[Travis Covington]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

The highest scoring bot I saw was one that parked under the ball dumb got ALL the balls, drove over to the ball chute, and deposited them all.

Got any pics? I would love to see that!

PS. Sorry we werent there.. i wanted to see what you guys have been up to!

[ArJubx]

We (#1463) went to the DC afternoon session. We mainly went for the learning experience. This is our first year so it was quite helpful. Although we didn't manage to do much because of poor decisions caused by lack of experience, we managed to get a good idea of what we need to do to fix our issues.

DC had some arena controller issues, so there radio channel conflicts because not many teams brought thier own compitition simulating control box thingy (us included). Also most teams didn't have autonomous code yet (we didn't, I just did all that today after school). The few that did, did barely anything, #225 drove forward like 5 feet and stopped, another team just spun in circles.

Those balls at DC were really messed up, they were smaller and heavier than the regulation ones. So alot of ppl's shots went right between the PVCs because of the reduced size and added mass. We kept rolling right over them....our bot is about 2 inches off the ground....

When we were there, 2 teams managed to hang...1 team took over 4 mins to do it tho, but #225 did it quite fast (1 min or so for the whole process), so they are a team to watch out for. There were many other teams that tried to hang, but either broke or just couldn't do it. From reports of the mourning session only 1 team managed to hang then.

About capping those big double point balls. Most teams had issues getting them. 1 team who used a suction cup jammed the ball all the way down into the mobile goal, another team with a giant metal bowl like suction cup managed to pick it up but held on only for about 2 secs. A few other teams tried to get it, but failed.

While we were there, a team tried that catch all the balls as they fall strategy...only once did they manage to catch more than 2/3 balls.

Our bot is a ball gatherer. We were way too fast (First round I hit the side gate and knocked it off lol, in the process getting our bot stuck on the side lip thing), and had ball control issues (being fixed tommorrow). Second round....we rammed a ball sooooo hard it flew out and hit some ppl in the crowd, lol. We also had some control issues...high speed turning was backwards (right was left, left was right). Even with these issues, we managed to gather a few balls each time, and with our good shooter we managed 35-50 points a couple of rounds.

For those at DC that might not remember who we are...we are the bot that start standing and then proceed to fall over...

[rswsmay]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Ok this is great and all, but what did you you learn about the dynamics of the game? Not to whine, but this thread has gotten a bit of topic, and us teams who weren't able to make it to a practice scrimish would really like some insight into things.

How big of a hazard were the small balls?
How did autonomous go?
How much contact was there?
What strategies were sucessful?
What strategies weren't?
Was hanging big?
How important were the smalls balls and the big balls?
What sorts of mehcanisms proved effective and inneffective?
What were the common characteristics of high scorign robots?
What were the biggest challenges for most bots?
How important was speed? Torque? Control?
Were alot of people able to get up the ramp?
.......... etc, etc, etc.....

Well we attended the Peachtree regional at SciTrek this past Saturday. We along with the majority of teams there had their share of mechanical problems, but we thought it well worth the trip out to see our defiencies on a playing field.

1. Small balls were no hazard.... not sure what hazards you might be thinking of other that maybe excessive bouncing around the field or maybe a bot running over one.

2. The scrimmage was not setup to replicate the conditions conducive to good autonomous operation, but several teams did take a stab at it. I don't believe anyone was able to effectively track the line, or IR beacon.

3. As it turned out, there wasn't very much contact for the bots that made it to the field. Most ended up concentrationg on doing their own thing. The majority of contact was made between bots and walls, bots and platforms, bots and the floor, bots and mobile goals, etc.

4. I believe that the key question is which bots were successful in their strategy, as a consequence of a good design and implementation. There were some that were built primarily to herd the balls, others that went straight for the bar, one that focused on manipulating the 2X ball, and one that was very good at grabbing the mobile goal and ball herding. All could be effective given the complexity and dynamics of the game.

5. The converse holds true for ineffective strategies. For us, we never got a fully trial of our strategy since we were one amongs the many that had mechanical problems. We did manage one scrimmage round where we fielded 4 of the 10 pt balls. However our competitors managed 1 of the 10 pt balls plus hung from the bar for 60 points. It will pay to scout out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents to be flexible in your competitions strategy.

6. Out of the approx 8 bots there, about 3 had mechanisms to do bar hanging, but only one did it at all and did it more than once.

7. Big balls are only as effective as the small balls in the goal. 2x ball times zero small balls is still zero.

8. For us our 4 wheel drive train was modified when we returned from the scrimmage. Too much side friction to over come, so we have the pneumatic tires for drive on the rear and casters on the front now. (All that wasted time ). One team had similar problems with treads, the side friction was causing their treads to disengage. I was surprised to NOT see an effective ball hearding design, including ours. It was good to see however that the use of pneumatics was good for most teams.

9. Too few functional bots at the time and too few scrimmage sessions to make the determination as to common characteristics of high scoring bots.

10. Biggest challenge was manuvering/negoating the field to get up on the platform, or grab the mobile goal, or herd those rubbery/bouncy balls to the corral.

11. A good balance of speed and torque is always good. Of course if your goal is to heard the 10 pt balls, you can't do that with too much speed. They go all over the place. I would give up some speed and torque to get better control for our strategy.

12. Ramp...? What ramp...LOL. No need to get up the platform unless you plan to hang from the bar, or block another bot from hanging from the bar. I guess if a 10 pt ball ended up there you could be going after that, but most remained on the main playing field since their strategy required that.

Hope that helps...... We missed you guys at the regional. See ya on the 18th - 20th.

[KevinB]

Originally Posted by Rickertsen2

Ok this is great and all, but what did you you learn about the dynamics of the game? Not to whine, but this thread has gotten a bit of topic, and us teams who weren't able to make it to a practice scrimish would really like some insight into things.

Rickertson, Why didn't you guys come to the Georgia Tech-hosted scrimmage at Scitrek? It was loads of fun.