Shooter vs Dumper Trade Study

[BurtGummer]

After attending the LA regional this weekend, I saw both systems do great. I saw 1717 with their shooter, although they usually kept it within a 5 foot range. Their advantage was being able to aim however they wanted, so if they got pinned there were more possibilities for them to score on the pinning robot than if they were a dumper. Their distance was also easily controlled by retractable hood on the turret. Their drive system was also very nice, but I did not get to see what exactly it was. From a distant observation, it looked like each front wheel was steered like a car. I'm not sure about the rear wheels. Overall a very well built robot, and we had the pleasure of working with them and winning a round 88 to 6.

Team 399 was a dumper, and also did extremely well. Once they were filled, they could haul across the field and dump their whole load with ease. We were one of their victims, and we saw it coming before they even got to us, because they had an advantage on speed. Also another very well built robot.

So both designs worked well, although 'shooters' kept close ranges.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by BurtGummer

After attending the LA regional this weekend, I saw both systems do great. I saw 1717 with their shooter, although they usually kept it within a 5 foot range. Their advantage was being able to aim however they wanted, so if they got pinned there were more possibilities for them to score on the pinning robot than if they were a dumper. Their distance was also easily controlled by retractable hood on the turret. Their drive system was also very nice, but I did not get to see what exactly it was. From a distant observation, it looked like each front wheel was steered like a car. I'm not sure about the rear wheels. Overall a very well built robot, and we had the pleasure of working with them and winning a round 88 to 6.

Team 399 was a dumper, and also did extremely well. Once they were filled, they could haul across the field and dump their whole load with ease. We were one of their victims, and we saw it coming before they even got to us, because they had an advantage on speed. Also another very well built robot.

So both designs worked well, although 'shooters' kept close ranges.

207, 330, 399 and proved for me at LA nonturreting dumpers work great.

1717 and 1726 proved to me that "turreted dumpers" that can get balls out FAST at point blank, using the turret just to account for missalignment, have the potential to be amazing. They were less consistent than the simple dumpers as they require much more software, but when they shined they SHINED. Witnessing 1717 strafe sideways following a goal while they're turret was locked on to the target and filling it was the single most impressive sight I've seen this season.

[Spylake]

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight I think the results favor the hybrid, short range volume shooters followed very closely by dumpers. A dumper's success turns out to be directly related to the speed of the dump mechanism. The fast dumpers like our alliance leader Team 179 Swamp Thing were very effective.

Overall, I think, the tracking long range shooters were the least effective. The challenge of tracking and ranging along with the required leading of a moving target is a daunting one.

It will be interesting to see if more software development before Atlanta will improve their performance substantially.

[kwojcik]

1717 Aux-pilot here. I'm very happy with the way that our turret played out, but our distance calculations were bogus the turret aiming was a little sketchy at times and I constantly had to be re-targeting vision targets even at point blank, sometimes resorting to complete manual mode.

We have left-right swerve drive, complimented with a very physics-based traction control system that we feel really gives us max power. I know the talk around LA was that you cannot get out of pins, but after retuning our traction control (we had brand new wheels, and they got worn in) in one of those championship matches we were able to vector out of a very very well placed pin using our traction control system in which the other robot actually hooked into our ball collector(not sure which team, but nice driving).

As far as shooting vs dumping, the lighting made distance shooting completely unreliable and we resorted to point-blank power dumps. Ideally, I feel like a very good shooting robot would dominate because they could avoid being caught in the chaos, but then again it would be hard to find a safe place to shoot from within the chaos