FRC488 - team xbot presents X8: The Ocho

[Squirrel Lord]

You know what? I come home after school and start to scout for Portland. Now its a few hours later and I check Chief Delphi again to see if I can glean any more information for my report. And look, 488 gave me the best present of all: good information. Very good information actually!
Thanks a bunch!

[Madison]

Originally Posted by octothorpe

Very nice robot – a truly elegant job on the paneling, and a design that's clearly very capable at the game. Sounds like a phenomenal sensor package too, I wish we had that kind of intelligence on our robot. My only qualm is at your mention of redundant cabling... because our elevator lacks it. Not that we had room for the extra weight anyway . Good luck and 766 will hope to see you at Championships!

Thanks! We've never had so many sensors on a robot before; in fact, I am not sure if we've ever had sensors on a robot in the last three years. We knew early in the season that we could build mechanical systems to do everything we needed, but also that success this season was going to be largely based on good control systems. We've tried to do everything possible to give our programming team the feedback and access they've need to generate our software, and while I'm sure they might've liked a bit more time, they've done an amazing job.

Originally Posted by EricVicenti

Will that fit inside the 80" cylinder?

Yep!

Originally Posted by Blue_Mist

488!!! Many fond memories at Silicon Valley last year, and hopefully we'll see you again in Atlanta!

Beautiful robot. I like the tipping back, which I haven't seen yet this year. I only have one item to point out. How are you on other robots knocking into Ocho, either tipwise or possibly knocking the ball out?

Y'all were fantastic alliance partners and I wish we could make it down there again to make another run at a win.

The robot is pretty stout. The forks are, by design, expendable in some capacity -- and very easy to replace. We have two spares fabricated already with plans for three more.

It's pretty challenging to tip the robot. Our biggest fear is being clotheslined by the overpass while being illegally pushed from behind. While there's a penalty for that behavior, we have no expectation that faster robots will be well controlled.

The ball is pretty well corralled, also. We have some ability to vary the extent to which the forks tip the ball back against the robot, so if it turns out that we're dropping the ball frequently, we'll hold it tighter against our frame.

Originally Posted by Squirrel Lord

You know what? I come home after school and start to scout for Portland. Now its a few hours later and I check Chief Delphi again to see if I can glean any more information for my report. And look, 488 gave me the best present of all: good information. Very good information actually!
Thanks a bunch!

No problem! I can't wait to see your robot this season -- do y'all have any pictures?

We know how important it can be to have good information and, while there are some things about robot and strategy that we considered to be loosely "proprietary," we hope that by sharing as much information as possible, we'll encourage others to do the same. Ignorance doesn't typically benefit anyone.