Video of This Year's Highest Scoring Robots

[gblake]

Watching you guys (1986) in the video and thinking about your question (what are the little things that...) reminded me of something that came up during the demo year for the Tetrix equipment.

When you can't see something easily from the driver station (like a soccer ball hiding behind a Breakaway Bump), a complicated, expensive, hard to implement and hard to debug solution is a digital video camera beaming pictures to a driver. Another complicated one is using a camera and computer-vision software to detect soccer ball shapes on the field.

However, within the limited confines of the field, an elegant, simpler alternative might be a simple, shiny, flat piece of metal (a mirror).

If you come across some elegant solutions to that hidden ball problem, or to lining up with the tunnel (to drive through), or to attaching to the tower (for a hang); I would love to get a peek at your notes once you finish trolling through this year's videos.

Blake

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by gblake

When you can't see something easily from the driver station (like a soccer ball hiding behind a Breakaway Bump), a complicated, expensive, hard to implement and hard to debug solution is a digital video camera beaming pictures to a driver. Another complicated one is using a camera and computer-vision software to detect soccer ball shapes on the field.

If slightly off topic, I really liked one team's simple use of the Axis camera this year. I forget for the life of me who it was, but they had good possession, so their camera would look at the ground and see if something looks vaguely like a ball in front of them when they hit a button. If that was true, a button would light up and they could just drive forward and their grabber would pull it. No slow visual feedback to the DS, no trying to make the robot move automatically. I thought that was really cool, if not as stupid simple as a mirror.

While Shaker never got to the level of "one of the highest scoring robots" (We're working on that for Ramp Riot), we do have a decent highlight reel that shows off our striker abilities, a combination of a pretty decent vacuum and a talented driver. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYTJwKPH9vQ

I'd be interested in a "469 as midfeeder" highlight reel.

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by gblake

When you can't see something easily from the driver station (like a soccer ball hiding behind a Breakaway Bump), a complicated, expensive, hard to implement and hard to debug solution is a digital video camera beaming pictures to a driver. Another complicated one is using a camera and computer-vision software to detect soccer ball shapes on the field.

However, within the limited confines of the field, an elegant, simpler alternative might be a simple, shiny, flat piece of metal (a mirror).

If you come across some elegant solutions to that hidden ball problem...

Funny you should mention that! We had this same revelation in Atlanta. Our driver was sometimes ignoring easily obtainable balls because they were behind the bump out of his view. We realized we simply needed a mirror on the front so he could see them. An evening run to the baby department at Target yielded the perfect mirror....and oval, plastic, parabolic mirror that gave a wide angle view of the area in front of the robot (we decided to remove the cute stuffed elephant that was around it.) We had it on by mid-day Friday, and our driver reported it helped him several times. Here's a pic:

[Cheerleader1073]

After winning the first match, tieing the second, and losing the third... we came back to win the fourth finals match at Granite State Regional 11 to 2! Thanks 1058 and 1519! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojl8JoZYtTM

Also at the World Championships in Qualification match 93 we won 16 to 7 and in the Semi-Finals at Worlds on Newton we lost to the team that ended up winning on Einstein in all close high scoring matches... lost 14 to 13, tied 13 to 13, lost 13 to 12.

[kenavt]

At the Michigan State Championship, we had two high scoring matches:

Qualification Match #20 (469, 67, 2048 vs. 308, 397, 2337): 17-10 (loss for us, although we were playing 469 and HOT in our defense) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuazHLFwHc - our own Youtube video.

Qualification Match #88 (910, 2337, 49 vs. 226, 1250, 2673): 19-5 win for us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H46tQt5105M - again, our own Youtube video.

However, before MSC we added a deflector to our robot "469-style", allowing us to deflect when we were on the ground and up in the air, hanging. In match #88, we spent the whole match hanging and deflecting balls, while in match #20 we did some deflecting and some moving of balls.

[JABot67]

Here are some of the best matches of the HOT Team:

Newton qualification match 87 (910, 525, 932 vs. 67, 668, 971)
Some of the best teams in the division faced off in this match, which ended up with a score 16-20 blue.

MSC Finals Match 1 (1918, 469, 2834 vs. 67, 217, 2612)
This was the famous 18-18 tie match that kicked off the MSC Finals and showed the online viewing audience how insane the competition in Michigan was.

Detroit District Finals (67, 51, 1023 vs. 27, 201, 1)
These matches weren't too high scoring, but they were extremely exciting because of the strategy involved. Whether we won depended on whether 51's robot could successfully hang and redirect balls.

But even more exciting than those matches were the Einstein matches that I'm sure everyone has seen at some point.

[lynca]

Originally Posted by JABot67

Here are some of the best matches of the HOT Team:

Newton qualification match 87 (910, 525, 932 vs. 67, 668, 971)
Some of the best teams in the division faced off in this match, which ended up with a score 16-20 blue.

The announcer is awesome in this match, if only the camera angles could capture this amazing match !

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by lynca

The announcer is awesome in this match, if only the camera angles could capture this amazing match !

Hahahaha. Good god. That is Sir Charles.

He is really popular around the P'tree Regional, and his announcing is the most exciting ever, but listen to it sparingly.

- Sunny

[Tom Line]

I'm rather fond of our Newton Quarterfinals match:

34 to 13 before penalties.

Thanks 16 and 343! We made a heck of a team!

[ttldomination]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

I'm rather fond of our Newton Quarterfinals match:

34 to 13 before penalties.

Thanks 16 and 343! We made a heck of a team!

Must've been on hell of a Dawgma build up, TBA shows 25 for you guys. Got any videos of this one?

- Sunny

[Tom Line]

So far, other than a digital picture that someone posted of the final score that showed the points and penalties, I haven't seen a video. I know we took one, but we've been so busy we haven't sorted it and put it up.

9 dogma penalties were assessed to our alliance, though we never saw our ball handler fumble the ball once. Dogma's the thing I probably disliked most this year.

[roystur44]

All,

Here is the final match of SVR 2010 showing how we roll. Watch the driving.

We had 254 playing mid position, 649 playing defense and 971 playing striker.

Team 971 went 16-0 with over 130 goals scored. Our bot was fast, great drive train, excellent ball magnet and had a excellent driver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X27bojZ26k


Roy
PS in two years we haven't lost a single match at SVR

[jspatz1]

Originally Posted by roystur44

All,

Here is the final match of SVR 2010 showing how we roll. Watch the driving.
We had 254 playing mid position, 649 playing defense and 971 playing striker.
Team 971 went 16-0 with over 130 goals scored. Our bot was fast, great drive train, excellent ball magnet and had a excellent driver.

Holy cow, that's what I'm talkin about. Just brute force goodness. Literally running circles around the defender. Nice.

[Meredith Novak]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

So far, other than a digital picture that someone posted of the final score that showed the points and penalties, I haven't seen a video. I know we took one, but we've been so busy we haven't sorted it and put it up.

A video would be nice to see. I am really glad I wasn't in the stands when everyone on the team realized that no one had recorded it! (I know, likely story.)

[kstl99]

I am rather proud of how our team did. We could not hang and had no ball control but we were quick and agile and had a very strong kicker that went almost the length of the wide side of the robot. Our specialty was feeding balls to the offensive end from the middle or even the defensive zone for the front zone robot, occasionally scoring ourselves. It got to a point where the other teams were defending us in the middle zone. If you do not count the match where we sat with a dead battery in the finals in Manchester, our alliance averaged 8 goals per match in the playoffs. We averaged 8 in the playoffs again when we won in Boston. We averaged over 12 in the quarter and semi finals on Newton.

Thanks to lockwhiz we can watch the final match in Boston:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wysi3s7h0qA