Abandoning Floor Loading

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

In our strategy meeting yesterday, our team voted it to nearly last. Essentially, if we make a grabber that can pick up off the floor, great, but if we cant, then thats just too bad.

My personal opinion is that picking up off the floor will be incredibly important: Just look at 2007, when did you ever see a robot go all the way to slot to pick up a ring. Maybe it had something to do with the orientation of the slot, but regardless, it will be important this year, especially for stealing the enemy's pieces that their human players throw. Maybe I can sell the team on that

Generally, that kind of attitude towards a design feature means it never gets done. Not saying it's a wrong choice to abandon floor loading, just commenting on the design process.

[Phalanx]

Originally Posted by Grim Tuesday

My personal opinion is that picking up off the floor will be incredibly important: Just look at 2007, when did you ever see a robot go all the way to slot to pick up a ring. Maybe it had something to do with the orientation of the slot, but regardless, it will be important this year, especially for stealing the enemy's pieces that their human players throw. Maybe I can sell the team on that

We on Team 1089, also second this philosophy. IN 2007 we picked up tubes from the floor very very quickly. We also believe that a number of tubes will be dropped. This means (unless I missed it as being not allowed in the rules), we would then be able to grab that tube off the floor and score for ourselves with it instead of our opponents.

[Racer26]

It seems to me that floor loading is vital to the success of the best teams. If you can floor-load, and steal your opponents game pieces to put on your own rack, then you don't have to put all of your game pieces into play, thereby limiting the scoring opportunities.

[IndySam]

You run down and pick up a round tube from your loader, you then race back down and have to put it between two other tubes to complete a row and score big points but you miss and drop it. You loose the match and that darn tube is sitting on the floor mocking you.

Will you be able to live with your decision then?

[KrazyCarl92]

A floor loader can:
Pick up pieces opponent's robot's drop
Pick up pieces from feeder/HP (have them drop it on the floor in the lane)
Pick up pieces that an alliance feeder/ferry bot bring back and drop in the alliance zone
Pick up pieces that are thrown onto the field

A feeder loader can:
Pick up pieces from the height of the feeder slot

Who has the upper hand?

I'll tell u that if I'm in a match against an alliance with no floor loading capabilities and our alliance can, we will definitely be chucking all of the pieces onto the floor regardless b/c we could get them and the other alliance could not.

[SteveGPage]

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

I'll tell u that if I'm in a match against an alliance with no floor loading capabilities and our alliance can, we will definitely be chucking all of the pieces onto the floor regardless b/c we could get them and the other alliance could not.

Shhh .... That's our plan, too!

[tim-tim]

It will be important to have the capability to pick up off the floor. However, I do not think that it will be our primary strategy unless the above ^^^ is the scenario. By all means, please make robots that can't pick up off the floor. Be my guest!

It was a huge factor in 2007, now some rules have been changed to make it more challenging, but don't let the challenge scare you. It can be done, I have just the design.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by SteveGPage

Shhh .... That's our plan, too!

Well then we will see you at Granite State! Team up and take out those non-floor loaders!

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by IndySam

You run down and pick up a round tube from your loader, you then race back down and have to put it between two other tubes to complete a row and score big points but you miss and drop it. You loose the match and that darn tube is sitting on the floor mocking you.

Will you be able to live with your decision then?

While designing to recover if you make a mistake isn't a bad plan, a better plan is to get the tube on the first time! It will realistically take several seconds at least to recover that tube, especially if it takes a "bad bounce" off of another robot or the other scoring pegs. Even worse, it could knock other tubes off on the way down! And I know banking on alliance partners isn't the best strategy, but chances are you won't be on an alliance with three of the exact same robot.

For those who think chucking tubes is the way to go: watch matches from 2007. The very best throws could barely make it the rack, which was about 20 feet away from the drivers station. It was hard to get the tubes to track straight -- very often they arced over the field because the only way to get distance was to frisbee them. If you're launching them from the HP stations (which I imagine will be the only way, as the scoring pegs keep the middle pretty clear), your human player better be darn sure they don't end up off the field, or much worse, inside your opponent's scoring zone where you can't touch them at all.

-Ian "Still bitter about the misthrown tube that knocked 1276 out of the tournament at BAE in 2007" Curtis

(watch the red alliance start chucking tubes as autonomous ends, that gives you an idea of how easy they are to throw)

[ThirteenOfTwo]

In a nutshell, giving up on floor loading means risking letting the other alliance pull the "human players throw everything across the field at you" strategy. Though keep in mind that even if a robot can't pick up your tube, they can still herd it back to their scoring zone...

[Chris is me]

And with the 60 rule becoming the 84 rule, I think we're going to go ahead and floor load.

[vigkvagkv2]

My team is making a feeder robot, so literally our whole strategy revolves around someone from our alliance staying in the scoring zone, picking tubes up from the ground, while we quickly zip across the field with our low center of gravity. So basicly, I would hope that teams don't abondon floor loading. If they do, my team is hosed for alliance picking. I wonder how many other teams are doing this?