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Unread 10-05-2016, 10:40
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

My opinion is very mixed. I think it was a great learning experience for our team, going through several design creator we designed around, and we came up with a design that I think most of us are happy with. Me, as the Electrical lead was pissed when they told me "Oh, those victors you put on there, yeah those won't work. You are about an 1/4 in too tall. How do you fell about rewiring all of our motor controllers with those shiny new Talon SRXs? Awesome. Oh, and Stop Build is two days away." Programming wasn't happy either. We had to cut a lot of stuff out, including our climber which someone spent a lot of time on. I agree with Sperkowsky that the ability to be able to transport the robot in a regular car was a major advantage for us, and we've already done two outreach events because of it. We did none last year.

In short:
Pros:
-Outreach events are easier
-Awesome design challenge and experience
Cons:
-Our robot looked like literally everyone else's at our comps
-Design challenge was probably a little bit too hard for our experience
-Easier breaching, but too focused on breaching, our low goal scorer (not really a shooter) really sucked.
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Unread 10-05-2016, 13:45
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

694 is very happy about choosing not to go under the low bar. We originally intended to try for low bar, but we quickly abandoned that idea during our CAD marathon when we realized that our design just wouldn't fit.

We knew from the get-go that having a low-bar capable robot is an absolute necessity for eliminations, but we didn't realize quite how ubiquitous low bar capability would be. By building a tall robot with a really fast drivetrain, we were able to breach extremely consistently. If you forget about South Florida regional (which we so dearly wish to forget), we were able to breach every match that our robot was working (and some matches that it wasn't).

We also realize, however, that we are the outlier in our success, particularly in that we were a #8 seed alliance on Einstein. Being able to go under the low-bar and score low goals is huge in qualifications, as it opens the door for captures much more frequently than would otherwise be possible. Seeding first is also hugely valuable towards winning events.

TLDR:
The ubiquity of low bar robots made it easy to get the advantages of low-bar for both qualifications and eliminations. In a world where low bar was more rare, low bar robots would completely dominate because having at least one low-bar bot is basically mandatory for a strong alliance.
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Unread 11-05-2016, 15:34
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Absolutely worth it. We stayed low, never got a single tortuga after 5 events, and successfully accomplished every single challenge of the game with the exception of the drawbridge with one robot. We got our high goal shooter dialed in at champs but quickly realized that it was too late and that other teams in our division were still faster than us. We even successfully cheesecaked our tiny climber for two other teams.

What worked in NC simply did not work at Championships. We were prepared for that until our climber gearbox broke on us after 3 competitions and we missed climbing for three or four matches. I believe if we had spent more time on our high goal shooter capability we would have been more competitive at the big show.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 17:17
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Transformer bot was the way to go this year, it is not an easy task to package and make successful this design. We only built how we did because of the last 2 years of offseason robot projects. In 2015 preseason we built our first ever elevator using proper methods, and then we built our 2015 robot with an elevator using what we learned. In 2016 preseason we built an articulated arm bot, a knockoff Mammoth from 971 to play Aerial Assist at MadTown Throwback, this year we built an articulated elevator arm using what we learned. Teams that successfully implement swerve drives do so by making it work in the offseason first. Build what you know, learn before you build as much as you can.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 17:35
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RoboChair View Post
Build what you know, learn before you build as much as you can.
I completely agree, and this was one of the main deciding factors for our team to go tall. Two members of our design team, myself included, were on the team back in 2012 and this year we essentially designed and built a Rebound Rumble robot for 10" balls that could also climb. This helped us to see what to do and what not to do based off of successes and failures of that past design.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 17:23
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

I feel like it really depends on how you play.
Initially we wanted to be a bot that could literally do everything, and the low bar was included.
However, after our first competition, we realized that we could be alot more effective as a shooter bot, (if we got it working) than as a defense bot.

As it turns out, during eliminations at almost all of our competitions it helped to simply go back and forth under the low bar while popping in high goals.

I may be wrong, but I feel like having to cross a different defense would have been a secondish shorter.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 17:15
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anupam Goli View Post
Not worth. We overestimated our knowledge and design capability. If I were to redo this season, I'd have us go tall.
We ultimately decided that it was possible for us to accomplish all of our goals while still designing a robot that was under 14" tall. I think going high would've made a lot of the design easier, but one of our goals was to be able to solo-breach, so we would've been forced to design a sally port/drawbridge mechanism. Looking back, I think that going low may not have been worth it, but there are some distinct advantages, like having low CG that Chris mentioned, that made it better.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 16:38
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

If I had known how many low bots would be around this season, I most definitely would have opted to be a tall bot. IMO, the only true advantage of having a low bot was being able to do the low bar. It made the shots super easy to block, and it was hard to keep track of where your robot was on the field, especially if there was a sally port/drawbridge on the field. It seems like the teams that did a fantastic job of pulling it off(1241, 2471) were able to do every other defense on the field, while having the advantage of shooting from a higher point. The only disadvantage was the higher COG, but it seems like most tall bots handled it well.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 19:16
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

I would add 1678 to your list because of their extending shooter and double jointed arm.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 20:44
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Yes. Helped 3534 with fast cycles and strategy options during matches. We spent a lot of time up front in cad working out the simple geometry to extend from 14" to the scale bar. So many experts said it couldn't be done. We took that challenge and we were among the top scalers in Michigan. Our high shooter was more limited by programming problems than the low bar capable design. Our best season ever and first trip to Worlds was a great payoff.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 20:55
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

for us, absolutely. I can also see how for some teams it makes sense to forgo the low bar in favor of simplifying reaching other objectives. The ability to forget about the category C defenses and still get the breach without the aid of alliance members was a huge thing for us.

We also gave up a lot to do this though. We did not attempt the high goal or climbing in favor of having more practice time and a simpler more robust design.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 20:59
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Was it worth it? To me, yes. A couple of our matches, we were the only robot, or moving robot, on the field. We could do A, B, and D defenses, no problem, every time. That left us with doing the LB to finish a breach. Sure we could design something to make us do C class, but I liked the low CG more than being able to do C class from the Neutral Zone. Our team listed goals that we hoped to accomplish this season, and our LB bot did them all. I wouldn't change a thing.
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Unread 03-05-2016, 23:27
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoaquinC View Post
Many low robots were also faced with the challenge, as largely discussed in the thread: Your tall opaque robot is now illegal, of having their cameras blocked by taller bots. For some, this was a serious issue and for others like 1986 this was just another problem that needed to be solved. Though I’m not sure if they eventually implemented this at champs.
We did use it with success in this match.
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Unread 04-05-2016, 00:26
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

For 4607, the low bar was definitely worth it. It took absolutely no functionality away from our robot. We could still climb, block robots with our 54" tall arm, and we also had a low center of gravity.

If there were no low bar at all, I think our robot would look almost identical to how it looks now. It might be 15" tall instead of 12".
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Unread 04-05-2016, 01:20
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Re: Was the Low Bar worth it?

We on 3476 were very happy that there was abundant low bar bots to work with. Our robot had a lot of weaknesses and almost always a low robot compensated this. If more teams went tall, we would had a much tougher time.
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