Bumpers = Bad for climbing ramps.
Thats what I learned today. I hope that teams realize that 30-60 points a round might be worth sacrificing those little pool noodles for a round or two.
Modifying your robot to “fix” another team’s design flaw = Bad, period.
Andy, that last match together, that team couldn’t get up your ramps b/c they were on backwards and scraping on the ground… I did tell them to turn around to their other end and it would have worked.
Jonathan,
It wasn’t my intention to single out any teams in that statment. I think its just a fact of life…bumpers make it more difficult to climb ramps. I think you guys would have been fine climbing on top of us.
In response to Tom, you are partially right…its not necessarily fair for teams to have to pull off bumpers to climb another robot…but when the robots that dictate whether or not you might win a round or the championship need these little tweaks, it might be a risk worth taking.
Also note that in the matches I watched at the scrimmage et al, there must have been ALOT of design flaws. I dont know if I saw a bumpered robot sucessfully climb a ramp bot all day at the scrimmage. I couldn’t tell you how many did or not yesterday because I wasn’t watching.
My conclusion…not necessarily a design flaw, but more envelope dictating ramp. We shall see though.
It may not be a design flaw, per se, but you have to wonder what teams were doing building ramps that are barely wide enough for another team to climb up and expecting them to do it in the final couple of tense seconds in a match.
Have fun with the delay today, see you around 1 pm Mr. Grady.
Having little credibility, since I’m with a team with a narrow ramp, I can only say that I respectfully disagree. I imagine we’ll see lots of ramp bots of all shapes and sizes at Boston, definitely a higher percentage than in Manchester. I would think flexibility on the part of both teams would be the key. Maybe the climbing team can take off just the constraining set of bumpers or the ramp team can remove their guardrails.
I also have to respectfully disagree with you Tom.
A team should resonably expect that the other teams it is designing a ramp for them to climb would NOT have a width of a wheel base that is not out to the limit. But a reasonable amount of distance ‘inboard’ (1 inch?) of the limits put forth by FIRST.
At the WWS, we were able to (barely) climb a ramp with our bumpered robot. The extra 6-7" of width makes it very difficult to fit on most ramps. Also, the fact that the bumpers are soft makes it hard for them to slide off of any vertical sides of the ramp, or similar. I hope that we don’t have to remove our bumpers, but it if makes the difference between 30 points or not, we’ll be taking them off.
Designing a ramp-bot to handle all types of robots and drive trains is a difficult task. Not surprisingly, it’s about as difficult as an arm/elevator/grabber to score the ringers. You’ll see both excellent and poor designs of both types of robots. The teams that compromised the design of their robot to accommodate both systems may find it difficult to be successful with either aspect of their robot. Single purpose robots may prove to be the winning design this year, which has been the case for a lot of years now…
Best of luck to all this weekend!
BEN
Let’s not forget about driver’s skill in getting up a ramp. Certainly, being almost the exact width of the robot makes it extremely difficult to climb up.
Has anyone found the YouTube videos that were featured today at the competition? I’ve tried out the tags that they’ve displayed, yet, nothing. (seeing as 172 was specifically mentioned, I wouldn’t mind seeing the video…)
By the way; 172 would like to invite all of our potential allies to take a look towards using our ramps! We hold the potential for 60 easy points… We’ve had surprisingly few robots who have even come back to them at the end of the game…
Yeah. Those ramps are really nice. Too bad you guys have had the problem with robots touching the wall (except for the match we tied… :rolleyes:)
It definately looks like you’ll be one of the top picks at BAE.
I’m kind of surprised with the strategies. Most of the scoring is actually happening on the bottom row. It takes too long to get high up, apparently. There are a lot of teams that do not have working robots. Some of them can play some pretty tough defense. No yellow cards have been assessed, as far as I know, and they have called teams on the 72 x 72 box.
Autonomous is pretty rare. Buzz scored once yesterday, and I don’t know if anyone else scored today other than 1073. It was the first time it worked and they were on our alliance. Perfect!
Yeah, that was really a mistake on our part. We backed into the corner without really judging the distance to the side wall. As long as we deploy towards the center of the field, there is no problem. Our drivers have been talked to a bit about this already. Won’t happen again.
I’m disappointed at all the low chassis and mecanum wheels though. Even with a gentle 18 degree slope, there have been a lot of robots that have just said no. (and the robots that can climb are all too busy scoring tons of points.)
Our hope is that the ramps will be attractive enough to the top 8 to be chosen into a good (winning?) alliance. 
Our ramp and platform have been working well here at BAE GSR.
We’ve had robots on top of us all day, we even had 2 in one match (only 45 points though )
And defense has shown to be very effective in this game :yikes:
I would also disagree with this. Our platform will not hold a robot with bumpers, BUT with the removal of one, it becomes very easy.
Also, after talking with Andy for a short time today, I think we have come to the conclusion that most teams going up ramps need to slow down a bit and just take it easy.
We have been giving teams 30-40 seconds, and it seems not worth it at this point. We cut our guardrail down as low as possible for low bumpered robots. We give them tips on driving up. What more does it take? Any thing to add to this Andy? Even some experienced driveteams are having trouble with this…with a low approach angle fo 14 degrees, we did not think this would be a problem…
Does anyone know why the FIRST site for the BAE Regional is not displaying match scores or rankings? I think it might be something similar to why the Pacific Northwest scores are corrupt halfway through, or maybe they just don’t have a net connection at the venue. Anyone at the regional have the inside scoop?
Attached is the data from the multi-team scouting database that team 166 started.
Thanks to the teams that contributed. Hopefully, we can expand on this idea in future years, as this is still mostly a database of strictly Chop Shop’s scouting data. It isn’t particularly complete, but it should be a help to teams out there that might be picking tomorrow.
(Shamless Plug/ Team 166 is ranked 20th and has won its last 3 matches after stumbling early. We’re definitely worth looking at, as we might even slide into the top 10 if we win our two matches tomorrow /End Shamless Plug)
Choogle Database.xls (29 KB)
Choogle Database.xls (29 KB)
Yea I don’t think we get wireless in the arena, so far (from what I have heard) the scoring here has been a good deal higher then at other regionals, there have been a few matches in the 200’s. the best teams so far (my opinion); 40, 175, 126, 58, 500 (or 501 can’t remember), 1276, 296, 172 and 190 have good ramps. Thats about all I can remember in my half asleep daze.
edit: But then we have played the same group of teams the whole day… so I am sure I am missing some teams that have performed well.
I love the ramp bots… They make the game sooo much more fun and interesting. Anyone have an updated score board? im up late trying to figure out who is ranked where :yikes:
PS: i love 172s robot. The pink is in! And i wish i had gotten the chance to drive up your ramp
Thanks for uploading the movies. Note the ‘deinterlace’ option in WME. I sent a PM on it.
Good work!
http://soap.circuitrunners.com/2007/movies/nh/
KA-108
Any updates on Alliances, Rankings? anything?
Last i saw on First’s website it only shoed the top 6 rnaked teams…