Are active intakes necessary to be competitive in Recycle Rush?

[NWChen]

I have limited experience with manipulator design, but FRC wisdom broadly states that for almost all games, the first priority in manipulating game pieces is acquiring them in the first place.

That being said, acquiring totes (and recycling containers) this year is unique because of the unusual shape of the totes. At the regional level, will active intakes (conveyors, rollers, etc. to acquire game pieces) be crucial to having a competitive robot? Or will alignment by the drivers be enough to acquire game pieces?

[PowerfulKitty]

This is an interesting question. In our time trial on our tote chute build from plywood it took me about 5 seconds per tote to feed them down the chute (with the stack next to me). I imagine human players will practice this and maybe get it down some, but that is the time that robots want to achieve. If a robot can add a tote to its stack in 10 seconds, then cutting it down to 7 by adding an active intake is clearly beneficial. But if it can already stack them up 5 seconds per tote, cutting that down to 3 seconds by adding an active intake to the robot is not beneficial because the human player is the limiting factor. I do not know if these are realistic times for robots to do, I guess we'll see that at the competitions.

[IronicDeadBird]

Wow I did not expect those results... Lets get a fire storm going I said "No."
There is a lot to work with this year when it comes to being competitive. I just don't think you need something like an el toro (it helps) when something like a funnel and smart driving will do the same. There is a lot of room for variety when it comes to design this year and maybe somewhere some group of teams are talking and managed to decide that instead of making one active intake mechanism they have several intake mechanisms that are passive.
One of my original ideas for a robot was basically a triangle that drives into a cluster of totes. The triangle forces the totes towards a mechanism that would pick it up and stack it inside and ontop of the robot and then the other side of the triangle with nothing on it would spit the stacks out.
Re-reading this though I can see that "active intake" might need to be defined.

[who716]

Originally Posted by PowerfulKitty

This is an interesting question. In our time trial on our tote chute build from plywood it took me about 5 seconds per tote to feed them down the chute (with the stack next to me). I imagine human players will practice this and maybe get it down some, but that is the time that robots want to achieve. If a robot can add a tote to its stack in 10 seconds, then cutting it down to 7 by adding an active intake is clearly beneficial. But if it can already stack them up 5 seconds per tote, cutting that down to 3 seconds by adding an active intake to the robot is not beneficial because the human player is the limiting factor. I do not know if these are realistic times for robots to do, I guess we'll see that at the competitions.

i agree with most of this but the part of cutting the time down to 3 seconds, it is always beneficial especially this year with the new format to do things as quick as possible.

[Zebra_Fact_Man]

I sure hope not. My team is not actively seeking to design/build one (expecting the driver/drivetrain to orient the robot for optimal interface), so it sure would be disappointing if that's what limits our success.

[who716]

Originally Posted by PowerfulKitty

This is an interesting question. In our time trial on our tote chute build from plywood it took me about 5 seconds per tote to feed them down the chute (with the stack next to me). I imagine human players will practice this and maybe get it down some, but that is the time that robots want to achieve. If a robot can add a tote to its stack in 10 seconds, then cutting it down to 7 by adding an active intake is clearly beneficial. But if it can already stack them up 5 seconds per tote, cutting that down to 3 seconds by adding an active intake to the robot is not beneficial because the human player is the limiting factor. I do not know if these are realistic times for robots to do, I guess we'll see that at the competitions.

i agree with most of this but the part of cutting the time down to 3 seconds, it is always beneficial especially this year with the new format to do things as quick as possible.

[Munchskull]

I would say yes. Every year I can recall, robots with active gathering were the best. It insures that you have control of the totes at all times.

[Nick.kremer]

I don't think it'll be absolutely necessary, but I can imagine it being hugely beneficial. While I haven't tested it myself yet, but from what I've seen having an intake to grab the tightly paked totes (from varying angles) in the landfill zone could be huge.

Just my 2¢.

[BJC]

I really don't think this is the sort of thing that can or should be voted upon.

Recycle Rush, like all FRC games have been in the modern era, is about how many points/second your team's robot / alliance can score. The more points you score, the more competitive you are.

The robot generally goes through a cycle in order to score. Something like:
1. Move to game piece(s).
2. Pick up game piece(s).
3. Move to scoring area.
4. Score game piece(s).
5. Repeat.

How quickly do can do a cycle determines how many cycles you do which determines how many points you can score.

So when you ask, "is an active intake necessary to be competitive" the answer isn't a yes or a no. An active intake is beneficial if it decreases your cycle time. If you are able to score more cycles than the teams you are competing against you will win.

Cheers, Bryan

[cadandcookies]

I'll say no. I'd anticipate the proportion using active intakes will be quite low this year, meaning two things in my opinion: teams with good active intakes are going to have an even higher benefit from doing so, and the bar for quickly acquiring totes is likely to be quite low.

So, not necessary to be competitive, but proportionally much more beneficial than in some previous years compared to the competition.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by BJC

I really don't think this is the sort of thing that can or should be voted upon.

Recycle Rush, like all FRC games have been in the modern era, is about how many points/second your team's robot / alliance can score. The more points you score, the more competitive you are.

The robot generally goes through a cycle in order to score. Something like:
1. Move to game piece(s).
2. Pick up game piece(s).
3. Move to scoring area.
4. Score game piece(s).
5. Repeat.

How quickly do can do a cycle determines how many cycles you do which determines how many points you can score.

So when you ask, "is an active intake necessary to be competitive" the answer isn't a yes or a no. An active intake is beneficial if it decreases your cycle time. If you are able to score more cycles than the teams you are competing against you will win.

Cheers, Bryan

Very rightly stated. Intakes can be very powerful mechanisms if you are able to stack and score effectively and efficiently. However, if much time is consumed gathering totes on an intake - then you are losing time scoring.

Stacking needs to be the optimal goal. Then how you gather the tots is secondary. If you use forks or the Greenhorns design - a lot of stacking can be accomplished.

If you spend too much time creating an intake at the cost of your stacking mech - so will your gameplay suffer.

[Gdeaver]

We really want a passive tote handling design but, after dropping count less totes and studying the fall of the tote and the variability of tote falls, we have come to the conclusion that totes from the feeder station need some active help. Every team should look at several totes to see the variability and wear characteristics of totes. They at times do not like to behave just like other game pieces in the past. If we do this right the human player and the drive to the scoring area should be the limiting factor.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by PowerfulKitty

This is an interesting question. In our time trial on our tote chute build from plywood it took me about 5 seconds per tote to feed them down the chute (with the stack next to me). I imagine human players will practice this and maybe get it down some, but that is the time that robots want to achieve. If a robot can add a tote to its stack in 10 seconds, then cutting it down to 7 by adding an active intake is clearly beneficial. But if it can already stack them up 5 seconds per tote, cutting that down to 3 seconds by adding an active intake to the robot is not beneficial because the human player is the limiting factor. I do not know if these are realistic times for robots to do, I guess we'll see that at the competitions.

Our goal is to have both the robot and the human player add a tote to our stack from the HP station in about 4 seconds or less. We are well on our way to meeting this goal. As of yet, we think that we won't need any active intake to do this.

I doubt that we'll see many floor intake robots that can make stacks this fast, even if they have an active intake.

[MrForbes]

There are too many variables here....are you talking about robots that are designed to get totes only from the human player? or only from the landfill? or from either? How does having an active intake, compare to having a mostly self aligning "passive" intake? There are lots of ways to get ahold of totes. Some will be faster than others, and whether or not they are "active" probably won't be the only discerning factor.

I like how the yes and no votes are split pretty evenly right now....

[GeeTwo]

I'm not sure if you'd consider the system we're using an "active" intake or not. There are no rollers or such "actively" pulling the pieces to the robot. We considered such rollers, but we decided to tackle clearing the landfill as a primary goal, hoping that we could get quicker at that than the HP can feed totes. Since the landfill is so tightly packed, most active systems would be unable to get around the tote well enough to get an initial grip.

As an alternative, we are implementing an extensive (at least for us) array of sensors so that all the driver has to do is slew into a rough position and let automation take over. We'll have a pair of rangefinders so we can square up on a tote, do some vision processing to find the distinctive tote features and align left to right, and have some touch sensors on our long-side grappler (similar to the Greenhorn's Ri3d, but with a passive "foot pressor") so we know when we've made contact. We also are working on "curb feelers" to automatically square up on the edge of the scoring platform to score, and programming an extensive set of "muscle memory" actions. The neat thing is that our robot will only have five actuators -- three for the H-drive, one for the lift motor, and one for the lift pawl (or possibly a brake). Over our short history, we've found that our success is inversely proportional to the number of actuators on the robot, mostly because it means more driver practice.