Aim Well

[ida_noeman]

In terms of functions, you don't want to ask yourselves "what do we want" but "what do we need." You don't have the time, room or weight to do everything that is slightly helpful, and I think this one is probably not worth it.

Depends.


If you can pick up balls from the floor, it may be just extra weight. If you can't pick up the floor balls, and plan to reload via your human player, any advantage you can give yourselves is a good idea.

[kevinw]

Originally Posted by Dr.Bot

Depends.


If you can pick up balls from the floor, it may be just extra weight. If you can't pick up the floor balls, and plan to reload via your human player, any advantage you can give yourselves is a good idea.

Imagine you are against other bots who excel at picking them up from the floor. If picking them up is not your strength (or if the opposition is stronger), a catcher may be the most effective way to get balls to your bot.

[ida_noeman]

Originally Posted by kevinw

Imagine you are against other bots who excel at picking them up from the floor. If picking them up is not your strength (or if the opposition is stronger), a catcher may be the most effective way to get balls to your bot.

It just seems to me that this doesn't seem like a competitive main way to get the balls in your robot. 1.) You can't assume that your team mate will be able to hand them off to you and 2.) How accurate really, is your human going to be? There's a big wall in front of them... and 3.) It will slow down / complicate your robot.
Just doesn't seem like a great strategy.

[shimarikakari]

I think it's mostly an issue of weight. A field loader weighs about the same as a big ball catcher. If you use both a big ball catcher and a field loader, then that's a certain amount of weight you take away from improving the shooter and the stability of the drive train. Realistically, will you ever have to collect balls using both human players and field loaders? It seems to me that you should use whichever type of loading you can build more effectively, because I doubt that either type of robot will find a shortage of ammo with eighty balls split between the goals and the field.

[Nuttyman54]

we have an open hopper, but it was not designed to make HP loading as easy as possible, it's probably going to be fairly difficult to load unless it's pretty close up. but we have what should be a fairly effective collector, so we're not too worried

[OZ_341]

Imagine a scenario where you have 6 effective scoring machines (low or high). This will be the case in the playoffs. In this case there could be (theoretically) almost nothing on the floor.

In this case hopper loading from close range becomes the dominant mode of ball transfer.

In 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004 balls were already out on the floor, fired onto the floor from half court, or dumped on the floor intentionally. In a really good match in 2006, I am not so sure there is going to be that much to harvest.

Just my 2 cents.

Good luck to everyone this season!!

[TEAM456MS]

Look for a human player that plays soccer. When you throw a ball back into play during soccer you throw overhead which mimics throwing over the wall. Our guy is dead accurate.