How Would You Change Your Robot

[Chris is me]

I could go on and on and on. I'll probably make a few posts on this topic, as the answer differs depending on the constraints (keeping the same robot design, starting from scratch, etc). I will say any designer that doesn't hate their robot by the end of the year is either really, really good at their job or... not so good at it. There is always something to improve.

If I had to start from scratch again, I would focus on the following attributes above all else:

• Floor Pickup that Kiss Passes
• HP Loadable
• Lob Shot (One Zone Truss / Front of Low Goal Score)

That's it. I would have no capacity for varying shot strength to shoot from range. The effort to reward ratio isn't worth it when those shots only matter in niche situations. The only exception might be a more linear shot for trussing to a human player. There are reasons to do more than this, but this is the best and simplest focus for 2791.

Numerous ways exist to accomplish this set of tasks - even from within the "arm/claw robot" paradigm we built in this year. I think the "best" way for us to have done this would have been to have built a 254-style backspin shooter with a fixed trajectory. Instead of two intakes and an articulating shooter back, I'd want one intake (in back?) and a pop-out lexan "chute" on the other side for simpler human loading. The way the Poofs did it performs better and meets their objectives better, but this approach drastically simplifies things which is better for our team.

The "claw" intake I believe can be made better than the best "bar" intake, but it turns out at the top level, intake performance was secondary to other factors leading to a quick cycle time. So as long as the performance dip wasn't massive (and it wasn't) a bar intake is the way to go to facilitate kiss passing.

More later, if anyone's interested and I still have homework to avoid.

[Mike Marandola]

We made the right choices for the most part. These areas could have been better:

-Faster winch motors/motor
-Faster intake (BAG motor on a VersaPlanetary would be better)
-Different frame (AM14U took too long to swap wheels)
-Different third stage ratio on VexPro ball shifter (we were really slow)

[Gregor]

Ability to quickly change out wheels quickly.

Ability to shoot with intake up.

Checkmate shooter (in front of low goal) for regionals, on the fly "line" shooter for championships. We had neither of those shooters.

More formulated strategy for regionals (i.e. drop ball in front of low goal, have parter push in, which we ran twice successfully at championships).

Mecanum wheels on intake.

6 cim drivetrain.

[mman1506]

Having a dedicated inbound/defense bot was reasonably competitive but not a lot of fun especially when paired with a weaker alliance.


PID for pickup actuation. It worked well in practice but it wasn't robust enough for competition.


Using a jvn style instead of a "drop down" intake.

A woven carbon fiber tube for a goalie bar instead of a pulltruded one that split along its grain.

[theawesome1730]

Would have done single speed drivetrain of about 18 FPS

[Caleb Sykes]

Change the intake roller gearing so that is is slower. They provide just barely enough force to pick up the balls as is.

[Max Boord]

Originally Posted by theawesome1730

Would have done single speed drivetrain of about 18 FPS

We did. We regretted. You shouldn't.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by Max Boord

We did. We regretted. You shouldn't.

Singles speed was just fine. 18fps, probably not. I think in a lot of cases it's more important to design for acceleration and time to distance than it is max speed.

For us: actually build two full robots. We swapped the manipulator arm every regional and it hurt our practice time and introduced more troubleshooting that was necessary. Would have been better to do it all the way (like we intended starting off).

[cjl2625]

Can't say there's too much I'd want to change on our robot; I'm really happy with how we performed at CMP.
Maybe a short shot from the 1 pt box would be good.

But if there's one thing I'd request, it would be a magic gyro that doesn't screw up. We've lost matches due to gyro problems, and then our field-centric swerve drive doesn't behave.

[Charles Boehm]

This isn't a change, but I wish myself and my team would've prototyped one or two wheeled shooters. That thought hadn't even crossed our minds as an effective way to shoot. But it evidently was, as 254 showed us all.

[Dragonking]

SKYSTALKER but better

Enough said.

[mlantry]

-Faster catapult reset
-not having a variable hard stop
-able to shoot with intake in frame perimeter
-modified our side plate design because doing anything by the wheels or chain was a pain in the butt because we had c channel plates

[jagen31]

Perhaps a shot into the high goal when positioned up against the low goal. Several strategy options open up given that ability. We saw the shot angle out of Barrage able to consistently put a ball into the high goal not only positioned up against the low goal, but up against another robot against the low goal as well.

Moreover, at Archimedes, I know a lot of us were very impressed when the eighth seed alliance used a strategy we had considered to take them to semis and almost to finals, where one robot would sit at the low goal the entire match and receive inbound passes from a human-player, shooting the ball into the high goal and putting up consistently high (300+ clean points) marks.

Imagine a long sweet-spot shot combined with a reverse-shot from the low goal so long range scores are possible, but if we get engaged in a pushing match, we can back out and pivot straight to the low goal, and score it for the full 40 points instead of settling for 31, plus we wouldn't have to turn to shove the collector into the low goal for the dump. Only problem is we have a tall back flap that gets in the way but we could always reinstall our shorter one.

Its nice to dream... eh? I bet we could add another mechanism with the 5 pounds for IRI... Then again, it would probably have to be made of neoprene or balsa wood to fit within weight constraints

And what else? The sky is the limit. Maybe a dual collector for three ball autonomous? Maybe add a gyro for super cool auto modes? Put the camera back on the robot? Notice those improvements all have to do with the autonomous period. I'm a programmer, what else would I want?

Probably the simplest improvement would be to add one of those driver precision flashlights, because they look sleek and seem useful for alignment. Even then, indicator LEDs that change based on our catapult state machine would be nice. We had those nearly operational earlier in the season!

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by jagen31

Perhaps a shot into the high goal when positioned up against the low goal. Several strategy options open up given that ability. We saw the shot angle out of Barrage able to consistently put a ball into the high goal not only positioned up against the low goal, but up against another robot against the low goal as well.

Our sweet spot was carefully designed to be from against the low goal, to 36" (+ a bit) back from the low goal. Also our shot was designed to leave the front of the bot 60" in the air. Few things made me happier than those times when we shifted into low gear, pushed a defender into the low goal, and then scored over their heads

[PingPongPerson]

We underestimated the weighting of assist points. I wish that our robot could have passed the ball back through its intake, instead of having to shoot it out. We also had a very short distance between tie points for our elastic bands. If we had used a longer distance I think our accuracy/precision would have greatly increased.