What did we learn - FIRST Scrimmages?

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Nickel5

Once a ball is up against the alliance station walls, it's dead. If it's against the side walls in the middle section, it's also dead.
Autonomous is very important because it's a unimpeded chance to score
Hard to manipulate ball, even with ball control

thanks for confirming what we were afraid of.
With bumpers on and being high off the ground, how the heck do you get it from the wall, without a manipulator that wacks it back into play?

I've seen videos of vacuum suction cups that work well, once it grabs the ball. But without rollers, it would make it almost impossible. Those videos showed it with their bumper off.

Kind of reminds me of 2008, comparing teams that had the top rollers vs. those that did not. We didnt unfortunately.

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by waialua359

This is why we are still scrambling wondering if we should powdercoat or not tonight or tomorrow, with less programming and driver practice.

Our robot frame is rusty steel....oh well...at least it can hold onto the ball reasonably well.

[Karibou]

I'm seeing a lot of mentions of kicking and scoring and traversing the bump, which is really good information for teams like my own, who still have some room to make changes to our robot before our week 1 event. What ended up happening with hanging - successful, didn't attempt, failure?

[commodoredl]

I saw at least one team at the Rochester Rally deploy a successful winch system and Elevate themselves (378). Team 1507 had a hanging mechanism but I only saw them deploy it once and it was too slow to lift them in the last 20 seconds. A second year team (I think TanX) had a scissor lifting pneumatic lifter, but they couldn't get the angle right and it looked like they didn't have enough air pressure/battery voltage to fully lift themselves.
I saw a lot of mecanum wheeled robots there. If any teams had a high traction drivetrain, I suspect the defense would be quite effective.
Not many robots were operating on the field, so there weren't many opportunities to see defensive strategies.

[Cyberphil]

Originally Posted by squirrel

I learned how many teams did not realize how important ball possession is.

It is very surprising that many teams did not think of this. We also overlooked the importance of ball manipulation. With the past few games being like they were, it is surprising that many teams overlooked this thing of extreme importance. Each game relies on manipulation of the game pieces. For some reason people think that other aspects are more important, but when you think about it, if you can't posses the ball and aim it, you cannot win easily at all. We figured that out a little too late.

[Mr_D_Mentor]

Of the 30 robots at the Suffield Shakedown, there were maybe 5 or 6 that attempted to hook on and elevate. Only a few were successful. Usually it took more than 20 seconds to complete the process.

The matches were low scoring. If that trend continues into the regionals, being able to elevate could be very beneficial.

Our drive teams had a little trouble adjusting to having the robot facing them most of the time.

Going over the bumps was not much trouble.

Balls against the side walls were difficult to break free.

I think there was only one goal scored during autonomous.

[V_Chip]

Originally Posted by Mr_D_Mentor

Of the 30 robots at the Suffield Shakedown, there were maybe 5 or 6 that attempted to hook on and elevate. Only a few were successful. Usually it took more than 20 seconds to complete the process.

The matches were low scoring. If that trend continues into the regionals, being able to elevate could be very beneficial.

Our drive teams had a little trouble adjusting to having the robot facing them most of the time.

Going over the bumps was not much trouble.

Balls against the side walls were difficult to break free.

I think there was only one goal scored during autonomous.

(I also attended the Suffield Shakedown)

I agree; majority of the matches were low scoring and out of the teams that were capable of hanging either struggled or successfully hung but not in the confines of the specified time.

Most of the robots were mechanum but some had difficulty traversing the bump or lining up with the tunnel.

1071: Your robot did well from what I observed.

[Mr_D_Mentor]

Thanks - but we had our share of problems. We spent the whole day today rebuilding the kicker.

[jamie_1930]

Originally Posted by commodoredl

I saw at least one team at the Rochester Rally deploy a successful winch system and Elevate themselves (378)..

I saw this and was extremely pleased to see someone hanging out there, but the problem I, and 378, noticed was their arm to elevate themselves was hanging below the plane of the platform when they were finished. In accordance with the FIRST definition of elevated

ELEVATED: A ROBOT that is completely above the plane of the PLATFORM and in contact with the TOWER shall be considered ELEVATED.

this would mean that they would not be awarded the points for hanging. Although I'm confident that 378 will be able to fix this in the next two days before ship (Yes we're that close and I'm sure everyone is panicking).

If anyone from 378 is reading this and I misinterpreted what was happening please correct me I would hate to have false information on your bot floating around.

[J93Wagner]

At Sussex (a scrimmage in Milwaukee, WI), Team 93 learned that our ball control devices didn't work a single bit. So now we're scrambling to redesign the devices in question. I'm just glad that we know this now rather than after the robot has been shipped!

[GBilletdeaux930]

Through observation, we realized that if you are hanging, be sure you don't make your hanger go too high.

Unfortunately, the one hanging attempt at Sussex (Wisconsin Scrimmage) didn't go so hot... 2062, I give you major props for your hanger, it works magically. But they brought it too high at one point and didn't pull themselves up high enough to get points... Watch that.

Oh, and we learned that no one likes to shoot when we flap a wall in front of their face

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by GBilletdeaux930

Unfortunately, the one hanging attempt at Sussex (Wisconsin Scrimmage) didn't go so hot... 2062, I give you major props for your hanger, it works magically. But they brought it too high at one point and didn't pull themselves up high enough to get points... Watch that.

Somone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the penalty was because they lifted too early, or extended into 'finale configuration' before the last 20 seconds. I would think they were just making sure they could lift and ignored the penalty.

The reason they were not completely over the platform was because their one hook was not on the bar so the robot was slanted on one side.

Both of these things seem very fixable/avoidable. 2062 had clearly the best/most advanced lifting mechanism at the scimmage. I forsee a lot of sucessful hangs for CORE at Wisconsin.

[FIRSTgirl675]

We learned that:
1.) robots are not as robust as they may seem. One robot at the Fembot's practice snapped their hanging arm in half (which took them 2.5 weeks to build).
2.) Never underestimate the power of your robot, especially during autonomous. You might end up launching over the ramp and into an alliance member's electronics.
3.) Robot problems arise only when you are not at home.

[Kims Robot]

Originally Posted by jamie_1930

I saw this and was extremely pleased to see someone hanging out there, but the problem I, and 378, noticed was their arm to elevate themselves was hanging below the plane of the platform when they were finished. In accordance with the FIRST definition of elevated

It was not counted by our Ref that time, but they did do it again in another match and their arm did not drop plus they lifted themselves higher. 378 has a very simple & elegant system and I LOVED it

What I Learned:

• MANY robots got stuck driving up on balls, lots of penalties there
• Ball Control will be very clutch, robots that are good at it wont spend time chasing balls
• A LOT of kickers broke today, a lot of cool solutions, but a lot of them broke, reliability may be tougher than we thought
• We didnt get a chance to see it done, but 1551 had an AWESOME solution for suspending a second robot (I would encourage anyone who saw it to let them keep their secret until week 1) I now think there may be more suspensions before Atlanta
• Human players were doing ok, it wasnt too difficult to return balls without fumbles
• It is possible to "do it all" - 378 could go over the bump, under the tunnel, kick & hang!! WOW
• Saw a lot of mecanum drives done reasonably well, and they were able to climb the bump
• Even really low robots can flip over going over the bump!! We saw two 16" tall robots flip over and turtle(on their backs)!!
• Kicking balls 2 zones wont be as frequent as we thought, only time we saw it done it bounced off the back wall out of the field
• FEED YOUR WATCHDOG!! (how annoying to get halfway through a match and get unfed watchdog errors)
• FULLY Charged Batteries work best if you expect to make it over the bump!!!
• Saw several matches with more penalties than scores, and while I would normally say this would "clean up" after early regionals, I think a lot of it is due to ball incursion & kicker feet getting stuck out, which may not be as easy to fix

Well a HUGE thank you to all of the teams that came out to Rally, we hope you learned as much as we did, and it was GREAT to see everyone!! We love the Rochester teams See you all at FLR in a week & a half!!!!!!

[Bomberofdoom]

Last time I didn't feed our Watchdog(last year, my senior year as programming lead), he went crazy and died on us.
I killed the Watchdog. Dangit!!! (Inside joke)