What have we learned about design?

[Rick TYler]

There have already been a lot of comments here about strategy and tactics and penalty points, and this was only the first day of regional competition.

This thread is specifically for comments regarding observations about robot design and how different design approaches are working in this game. I'll start:

1. Long, thin arms don't work so good. They whip around a lot, and I saw at least one on Webcast that got broken. Combined with #2 and #3 below, a lot of 'bots were lucky to score once per match.

2. A lot of robots have ineffective end-effectors. One of the many things I didn't expect to see was the wild number of tetras flying through the air when a 'bot loses its grip. Wear those safety glasses and hard hats!

3. Robots that do not have a positive grip on the tetras are doing (mostly) pretty poorly. A simple skewer or bar with an indent or anything else that doesn't grab the tetra firmly is a recipe for pain. A lot of teams spent a lot of time waiting for tetras to stop swinging. The skewers with long crossbars and articulated wrists worked better.

4. A lot of robots have poor basic controls. They can get close to a goal, but cannot line up perfectly. (This is mostly likely from lack of development time. Our robot drove like it was drunk the first time, but after a week of tweaking it is very reliable. We had time to change wheels and adjust our software. It looks to me that a lot of teams didn't have this time.)

5. So far, robots with shorter arms seem just as effective as the 13-footers. Since their arms whip around less, they seem to score with much better control, too.

6. Power helps. A lot of less-strong robots get pushed around like programmers at a WWF match. (Note to self: major upgrade to drivetrain next year.)

I can't wait for Portland!