Dedicated Empty Cell Handler?

[Steven Sigley]

The Robovikes have 2 "Hooks of Doom"...

http://www.vandenrobotics.com/plogge...n/dsc08991.JPG

[Rick Wagner]

Some good empty cell runners may find themselves picked to some winning alliances. There are 100 seconds available in teleoperated period before the PSs can start tossing super cells, and an attack bot just doesn't have time to go running empty cells too.

There are four empty cells per alliance, and three robots. It will be pushing it, but there's time for one specialist EC runner bot to run all four empty cells.

My main worry, since we built an attack bot, is that there won't be enough good EC runners to go around, and the top seeds might pick them in the first round!

[NOV8R]

The strategy that drove our robot design is securey delivering ECs to airlocks from the outpost. In autonomous we'll head toward our outpost and be ready to pick up an EC. Then in teleoperated we'll head to the airlock to offload. W'll repeat the sequence as long as needed. Our mechanism is a chute and small helix that enables us to very effectively pick balls off the floor one-at-time. The helix is capped by a high angle shooter designed to launch balls into the airlock. We can also collect regular balls off the floor to deliver to the PS to shoot if there are no ECs available. We can collect and store 7 balls before off loading them. Our robot performed well during scrimmage and our PS was able to score SCs during the last 20 seconds quite often.

[s_forbes]

I finally thought of the empty-cell strategy about half way through build season, but it was too late to implement by then. The coolest way to do it in my mind would be to build a robot with two catapults on it constructed so that, when the robot is right up against the outpost wall, empty cells can be dropped on top and instantly fired into each of the airlocks across field. 4 super cells in 4 seconds, unless you get bumped/mess up.

It's a bold strategy that sure would look cool; I wonder how many teams will manage to do it (or even try?)

[JM987]

?

[rees2001]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

The coolest way to do it in my mind would be to build a robot with two catapults on it constructed so that, when the robot is right up against the outpost wall, empty cells can be dropped on top and instantly fired into each of the airlocks across field. 4 super cells in 4 seconds, unless you get bumped/mess up.
(or even try?)

I tried to get my kids to think about this design also. They felt the Risk/Reward was too great. Instead we settled for a EC device on 424 (the robot on the right)

[jamie_1930]

Our storage space is partially netting so it can be handed through there or can be dropped in front of the robot pulled in slightly and spit back out

[Vikesrock]

We will be using our main intake to transport empty cells if strategy dictates. We are not really worried about the "land mines" as we believe that very few if any empty cells will become freely available on the floor.

Once in possession of an empty cell we will likely be shutting our conveyor off and moving to directly drop it off to one of our Airlock/Fueling Ports which should avoid most <G24-A> penalties.