ball cannon???

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Team 1708 Dave

The use of a "harvestor" type ball collector.. is this even legal? Read the rules a few times and it really dosn't say either way except that you can't herd game pieces.

Wait, what? Please, don't be so general. You can't herd Empty Cells if you already have an Empty Cell being herded or in possession (<G24>), but that's about it.

[KarlSTA]

i think they were referring to the legality about danger of wrecking the balls....not sure though

[Team 1708 Dave]

Ok.. you got me.. Sorry a lil tired, bear with me here. Not sure if it's legal to gather game pieces for the purpose of reloading your dumper or shooter during the game after you dump or shoot your 7 that you can have on board.

[sdcantrell56]

The suction we were referencing was in relation to suction on the ground to increase our normal force and thus traction. For anyone who is new, last year we had a suction device to hold a launch the balls that could grip with over 400lbs of force. That is why he was asking us about doing suction again. We will definitely not be attempting to suck the fuel cells this year

[jimbot]

Our team had this discussion the other day, and we concluded upon that a shooter will be very, very, very difficult. one piece of advice is when you (the human) shoot the ball at the trailer are you using a arcing basketball shot or a bee-line baseball throw. If you are doing the arc shot, try and score with a straight throw, because I don't know if you would be able to replicate a arc shot, let alone hit any object at multiple distances.

[scottyh2006]

well the lowest post are 32 inches so we are having a cannon bout 38" high and kinda just let the moon rocks and the cells just like come out not at a high speed just enough to make it go 1-3 feet.

[lingomaniac88]

My main worry about using a launcher/shooter is whether or not it will break the game pieces.

And Team 1708 Dave, it is perfectly legal to harvest game pieces off the floor in the middle of a match.

[ehcualp]

Originally Posted by lingomaniac88

My main worry about using a launcher/shooter is whether or not it will break the game pieces.

if your launcher is capable of breaking the game pieces, it should probably should not be used.
My team is certainly going to attempt a launcher. It will be difficult to fire in the same spot twice, but after maybe a week or two of practice we could have it down to an exact science.

Originally Posted by Daniel_LaFleur

I seem to remember people saying this about hurdling last year, too.

I seem to recall hearing that too. And yet, nearly every robot at nationals had a hurdling robot. Go figure.

[GGCO]

Well after a thoroughly healthy discussion and brainstorming session tonight I have a few thoughts.

A basket idea is nice, but I believe that it is essential to have a system that can harvest balls (efficiently) from the floor of the arena and this is one of the things that is sacrificed by implementing a basket system that can dump left/right/forward. Also, with a basket I think that it is only worth it if it can hold large quantities of balls. So if it holds 5 and 3 go in and 2 miss, no big deal. But the thing is, that is the only time you can shoot so it (assuming that you have no harvesting system) so it better be perfect.

I think that if anything a herding bot should have some kind of offensive system (a basket would be the best), so when they get into a "sticky situation" they can maybe use it.


I think that a baseball type shooter is alright. There are some definite issues of how to get the ball into the elevator that feeds it. It really has to be a perfect scenario for a ball to find its way to the opening of the bot, not run away from it because it hit a part of the bumper, and get wedged into it and go up into the elevator. However, if you can get around this problem it's a decent system. This is because you can (potentially if your turret can rotate) drop/shoot balls into an enemy bot's trailer from all 3 sides of your robot! You can also control how many balls go into the trailer!

Lastly, I wanted to throw out another idea to the CD crow that I brought up tonight. I don't like it as much as a shooter, but maybe some team can get inspired by it.

I thought of having a robot whose front part of it's chassis is indented. This allows a place for balls to gather. A basket would scoop down and gather the balls. This would make the basket argument much more compelling, but it also raises a whole other set of problems. For instance you sacrifice precious space of your bot to accommodate the scooper, and I believe that a robot with a shorter width is very much essential for turning this year.

That's my $0.02!

p.s. I really had fun with BOLDING, underlining, and italicizing

[Team 1708 Dave]

Thank You Lingo! Did you find the section that approves this action or are you reading betwwen the lines like we are?

[ehcualp]

Originally Posted by GGCO

I think that a baseball type shooter is alright. There are some definite issues of how to get the ball into the elevator that feeds it. It really has to be a perfect scenario for a ball to find its way to the opening of the bot, not run away from it because it hit a part of the bumper, and get wedged into it and go up into the elevator. However, if you can get around this problem it's a decent system. This is because you can (potentially if your turret can rotate) drop/shoot balls into an enemy bot's trailer from all 3 sides of your robot! You can also control how many balls go into the trailer!

My team has a great idea for grabbing balls from the ground, and having up to 10 waiting to be fired with the baseball shooter. I'm 100% that there will be problems with it, but it will be awesome if it works just like we plan it to.

[sxysweed]

Our team is... Broke. And we have very little options as far as welding and machining... But we've been tossing around the cannon idea. Pick the balls up and hold them monetarily, but have the cannon able to rotate (via control from the drive) but shoot at a fixed angle, variable speed. Kinda difficult, but managable. Conveyor belts used to shoot it out as speed.

First thing I thought was the ride-up-and-dump thing. But the two main things with this are a.) Bumper Rule: 60% must be covered and b.) slipery floors make this difficult.

[GGCO]

I think that if your turret doesn't rotate it isn't worth doing.

Think about it...

If your turret doesn't rotate you have to have the robot directly in front of you. This would be a big challenge if it were regular flooring. But it's not regular! The flooring will make it near-impossible to have an effective fixed-turret system. However, since your team is short of money it is better than nothing, unless you can get creative....

[lingomaniac88]

Originally Posted by Team 1708 Dave

Thank You Lingo! Did you find the section that approves this action or are you reading betwwen the lines like we are?

I didn't see anything in the manual that explicitly allows this, but I noticed that one of the robots in the game animation is able to capture game pieces on the floor. So I don't see why this can't be done.

I think conveyor belts are a really good way to manipulate the game pieces. My team used conveyor belts in 2006 for a floor shooter, and from what I heard, it worked very well. I think this could be applied to shooting or harvesting game pieces, as well.

[gorrilla]

maybe....if only you could somehow combine the harvester, with the shooter... into a single mechanism (hint hint)