If you could Breakaway all over again...

[Tom Ore]

Overall we were pretty pleased with our robot. We had an excellent hanger (altough it took us probably 7 or 8 seconds to hang minimum.) We could cross the bump easily at any speed. We often scored two balls from the far zone in autonomous.

I think our biggest weakness was the ball roller. I think we were contacting too high on the ball which made the downward force too high.

Another potential improvement is that we didn't change anything on the robot from the time we bagged. We won KC, had a narrow loss in the finals at 10,000 lakes and a narrow loss in the quarterfinals on Newton. All this with the robot exactly as bagged (except of maintenance) at the end of the build season. Had we worked on the ball roller during the competion season we likely could have done a bit better. I'm on the fence about this. I like calling the robot done on the last day of the build season and then seeing how our decisions work out - a bit sentimental maybe.

[Bjenks548]

Well for the past 3 years, 548 has worried too much about drive trains and forgone the actual game piece manipulation. Make a long story short, we made around 8 drive trains during the season, yes, we successfully built a new one each week with 2 in week one, and modified the competition one before states. With so much work put on the drive train, after 6 weeks of build, we had a linear kicker that was never tested, 2 hangers that didn't work, and no ball possessor. This resulted in copying a ball possessor from HOT team and our kicker breaking for our first full day of competition. Lucky for us our robot found a home in the near zone and played very well there, even though it was poorly designed for the mid zone. So with our team not having our final drive train till 10 weeks after the game announced, I'm wondering when other teams decide on the exact drive train they are going to use, I'm hoping next year to get it done by week one.

[Nick Lawrence]

I don't think I would have built a redirection bot, simply because that takes control of the game out of your hands and into your alliance partners' hands. No thank you. Sure it worked out for 469, but they did compete at regionals where there was plenty of competence.

I would have made my opinions heard much much more, and pursued a 6/8WD robot more, and probably thought about the bump a little less. I didn't see too many teams clogging up the tunnels all year.

I wouldn't have changed our ball control idea or kicker. Our application of our ball control was poor at best to me, but it did have great potential. A sturdier attachment system, and being used on a drive base that didn't draw 40 amps of current to turn would have been just fine. Our kicker was great after Pittsburgh, I wouldn't have changed a thing on that regard.

-Nick

[GGCO]

Definitely would take a redirecting robot idea seriously. It was brought up in a design session and quickly dismissed.

I also would have liked to have seen our team pursue a ball magnet and proper latch system for our kicker earlier instead of a double kicker.

That being said, 2010 was definitely the most enjoyable season so far!

[JaneYoung]

I would have bought a bigger box of popcorn and sat up higher in the stands. In the middle.

[Basel A]

For the most part, I was very satisfied with our robot's performance this year. Certain things could have gone our way (Week 1 suspension), or been done better (ball possessor).

However, there was one robot idea I had that would have been epic cool. Essentially, it would have looked a lot like 71's 'bot this year, with 2007-style ramps. The main point of the robot is facilitating suspensions, even without alliance partners that elevate. The robot unfolds the ramps, alliance members climb on, and the robot hooks to the tower and pulls all three robots up off the ground and over the platform.

Now, to note, that really would not have been a great robot. But that fact is it would score 8 points in the last about 20-30 seconds (with setting up time). That would have won most regionals across the country, though would not have been as good in Michigan or the CMP.

One concern would be getting enough power, but if at hooking, drive motors were transferred to hanging power, it could be done at a reasonable speed. This would be especially compatible with a spring-out hanger such as 2619, 201, or especially 2959.

Though having said all that, i still think our robot is better.

[kstl99]

Very few things I would change. Our head guy insisted we spend the first 2 meetings after kickoff talking about the game and planning strategy and not talking about the robot. This led to our priorities being speed and agility, being able to play any section, change sections and having a strong kicker, with hanging being a lower priority. I must disagree with previous posts as our mecanum wheels were one of our best assets and our drivers made good use of them. Although some teams had awesome hangers I saw many waste the last 30 or 40 seconds trying to set up, so I am not too disappointed we did not get ours working.

My biggest lessons as a first year electrical mentor are to plan the wiring very early so you can get what you need instead of using what you can get quick, and having the wires to the 4 wheel motors the same length (I have not yet been able to test if it makes a difference in how easy the robot is to drive straight).

[jspatz1]

...we would have prepared a block-469-from-reaching-the-tunnel autonomous program BEFORE we reached the Curie finals, rather than during the 5 minute break between matches.

[GGCO]

Originally Posted by jspatz1

...we would have prepared a block-469-from-reaching-the-tunnel autonomous program BEFORE we reached the Curie finals, rather than during the 5 minute break between matches.

Wouldn't we all? Lol.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by GGCO

Wouldn't we all? Lol.

The Poofs tried that and didn't quite get there in time after clearing all 3 balls.
They had the mode work almost perfectly on Einstien.

That wasn't the only way to do it though.

[maverickfan138]

Our kicker design did what we wanted to, so I don't think we would have improved our kicker.

We could effectively block 469 in autonomous, so that wouldn't need to be worked on.

Probably our biggest limitation this past year was the bump. We were forced to use the tunnel due to our design, and while the limitation only affected us when we versed 469, I think it would have been a bit quicker to climb the bump rather than driving to the tunnel. We realized at our first offseason competition that it would be fairly easy to convert our robot into a bump bot, but figured that there would be no point.

We also should have looked into hanging a little bit more. We had both horizontal and vertical hanging ideas, but we threw the idea of hanging out the window early on. We should have at least prototyped, but we decided that a hanger wasn't needed.

Lastly, we should have worked harder on scouting and public relations. It seemed like we a good team that the other good teams were ignoring, yet a team that the rookies and 'bad'(for lack of a better word) teams were looking up to. Don't get me wrong; we enjoyed the praise and attention from the rookies, but we wanted to play with the powerhouses more often than we did.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by maverickfan138

Lastly, we should have worked harder on scouting and public relations. It seemed like we a good team that the other good teams were ignoring, yet a team that the rookies and 'bad'(for lack of a better word) teams were looking up to. Don't get me wrong; we enjoyed the praise and attention from the rookies, but we wanted to play with the powerhouses more often than we did.

I think to a certain extent, when you get to the "top level" of competitive play, the good teams are paying attention to the field already. They scout better than anyone, and as a result they'll take careful note of how well you do regardless of how much attention you draw to yourselves.

As for the balls-on-the-wall problem, I thought my team had a pretty wonderful solution for that: Lexan on the front tilted inward about 10 degrees. Driving against a wall "rakes" the ball into the center, at which point our vacuums would grab on. This small and subtle difference saved ball after ball from being pushed away from our robot and gave us a huge competitive edge over other "push bots" since we wasted a lot less time per ball.

[J93Wagner]

When we shipped our robot to Wisconsin, we had a hanger on our robot. Unfortunately we were about 5 lbs. overweight and no one seriously thought about cutting the weight we needed to cut to keep it. Now, I realize exactly where we could have cut most of the weight we needed. The place: our ultra-tough kicker. The reason: as part of our design we had a massive 6-8 in. diameter delrin drum (swiss cheesed of course) but in reality we only needed half a drum (or no drum at all). It weighed a good ten pounds. Cutting a third off on the front portion certainly would've helped.

[theprgramerdude]

What I'd do: Actually smack the seniors over the head who refused to do any math or physics calculations and just slapped parts on the robot and said, "It'll work". It failed. Miserably. Our hangar was about 3 inches too short, getting over the bump was an arduous task and took almost 10 seconds if done right, the kicker kicked about 4 feet and it had severe issues turning...


Lesson learned: Do some frackalacking calculations and design work people.

[Lee Reid 3136]

We would probably spend less time on our repeater-crossbow-kicker idea and we would probably build the flipper arm on the bottom of the robot that would flip it on to the platform from the bump that I thought of last week.

This would have been nice because it would have allowed us to get what is essentially a hanging robot but would be much easier and much faster. Also we never lost a match by more then a point, so those two points would have been very nice.