Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?

[s_forbes]

I finally thought of the empty-cell strategy about half way through build season, but it was too late to implement by then. The coolest way to do it in my mind would be to build a robot with two catapults on it constructed so that, when the robot is right up against the outpost wall, empty cells can be dropped on top and instantly fired into each of the airlocks across field. 4 super cells in 4 seconds, unless you get bumped/mess up.

It's a bold strategy that sure would look cool; I wonder how many teams will manage to do it (or even try?)

[JM987]

?

[JesseK]

We have one. No one on my team wanted to do it at first, but being the lead build mentor I pushed for it and refused to back down from this one little system. My reasoning was something along the lines of "bots on Einstein will have one!".

At first it was going to be a long trough on the side of the bot, which wound up being to volumous to implement. We then integrated it in with our shooter design, which is a suspended turret.

All we have to do is drive as fast as possible, ram into the outpost, get the empty cell on our shooter ramp, reverse the shooter to back it up, then rev up the shooter, open the gate, and shoot the empty cell into the air lock when we're within 10 feet of it. We'll need some practice to get a shot off like that, but I expect that we'll be good at it by the time our 2nd regional rolls around.

We're really glad that I can be stubborn sometimes

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by JesseK

My reasoning was something along the lines of "bots on Einstein will have one!".

If I could keep track of the number of times we've used that logic to drive decisions...

[Founder]

Team 1141 has a designated EC system. It is located at the front of the robot just below the front of our hopper. It is just below the same height as the hole on the outpost so all the human player has to do is just push it through the wall(without putting their hand through the wall of course) and the robot sucks it in using a spinning roller. The roller is a similar design to the system that releases the balls from our hopper. we originally were going to use the ground pick up to capture and dump the EC but we felt that we would be passing by too many free MR on the floor on our way to the airlock. once at the airlock we just reverse the roller and it shoots the EC out from about 2-4 feet away.

[AlexD744]

Originally Posted by XXShadowXX

My team has built a pseudo empty cell handling system, it holds a said empty cell in the front of the robot, over the collection mechanism, and when we want to eject it, we need to drive the collection mechanism reverse, forward, then reverse and it shoots right out into the airlock. Now the last challenge, convince my team to attempt to collect the empty cell in autonomous. (legal?)

I've been trying to get my team to do that too. And I studied the rules carefully. It is legal, just be careful to make sure the tongs don't get stuck in the robot before it starts to drive again. However, no one listened to me. O and our empty cell holder is our pick up mechanism. They can be delivered in the side and by reversing we eject it to the air lock.

[gorrilla]

1557 has one, its just a servo and some signboard

[EricH]

Originally Posted by AlexD744

I've been trying to get my team to do that too. And I studied the rules carefully. It is legal, just be careful to make sure the tongs don't get stuck in the robot before it starts to drive again. However, no one listened to me. O and our empty cell holder is our pick up mechanism. They can be delivered in the side and by reversing we eject it to the air lock.

What tongs? The outpost doesn't have any.

[merybar]

Team 894 has a seperate rotary pneumatic mechanism dedicated solely for the purpose of retrieving empty cells.

[merybar]

Team 894 has a seperate rotary pneumatic mechanism dedicated solely for the purpose of retrieving empty cells.

[rees2001]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

The coolest way to do it in my mind would be to build a robot with two catapults on it constructed so that, when the robot is right up against the outpost wall, empty cells can be dropped on top and instantly fired into each of the airlocks across field. 4 super cells in 4 seconds, unless you get bumped/mess up.
(or even try?)

I tried to get my kids to think about this design also. They felt the Risk/Reward was too great. Instead we settled for a EC device on 424 (the robot on the right)

[thefro526]

We Don't have a dedicated Empty Cell "mechanism", but we do have two ways of getting an Empty Cell. To pick up an empty cell from the floor we just drive up to it, spin our roller slowly and then it gets wedged between the roller and a piece of polycarb, To offload it we just reverse the roller and the Empty Cell is ejected about 5 feet.

Or, we drive up the the outpost shield and the HP can put an Empty Cell directly into our conveyor system.