My team was coming up with potential strategies for optimizing cycle time. One of the strategies that we came up with we called called ‘ploughing’.
In this strategy near the start of the Tele-Op period, our robot would transfer (or plough) numerous (4+) cones/cubes to the edge of the loading zone on the side closest to our community. Then instead of having to collect from the substations teams on the alliance would collect from the pile of cubes/cones near the end of the loading zone for the rest of the match.
Here are Some pros/cons I’ve thought about:
Pros: Decrease cycle time by not having to travel through the loading zone, easier cube/cone pickup co-ordination between alliance members
Cons: Opposing alliance members may steal cubes/cones if left unattended, may be hard to pick up if cubes/cones are clumped together
Is this a viable strategy? Would it reduce cycle time significantly enough to go through the extra hassle of building something to accomplish moving numerous cones/cubes at the start of the match?
Are you saying that your robot would do this for the entire match going their and back with the soul purpose of moving cones and cubes? or Only during the beginning of the tele-op period. because if you drop off game pieces and the go back robots would either finish before you get back and are just sitting there waiting for you. I think its a good idea if you can figure out how to do this though.
I would be careful with that, I think that’s considered controlling more than one game piece at a time, especially if you have some sort of plow mechanism that drops down to help out with it.
that is true, but you have to plough them all the way from the loading zone to the community then you have to cross the middle area and the community so you would be controlling more than one game piece there.
Unless of course you just plough pieces from one end of the loading zone to the other, which wouldn’t really help with cycle times that much.
Do keep G108 in mind - the other alliance cannot extend outside of their FRAME PERIMETER if their BUMPERS are intersecting your LOADING ZONE. So unless they’re able to steal without entering your LOADING ZONE, your pieces are safe.
If you have a fast cycle time for getting game pieces to the edge of the loading zone, I don’t see how creating a pile of pieces is more efficient than just feeding 1 at a time. If only 1 robot on your alliance is scoring, you can stay near the game piece and protect it from being stolen by your opponents until your alliance partner gets it, and then you can probably have another piece ready by the time your partner has scored that piece.
Another twist would be if the plough could orient the cones for easier pickup.
If you caught a bunch of cones in a stack from substation then laid then down further up the zone it might let another alliance member be less congested and make a third loading zone of sorts. Though it probably would need protection.
I think the operative word in the strategy is “edge”. If you’ve ploughed to the “edge” of the loading zone, some (many?) opposing stealers wouldn’t actually need to put their bumpers in the zone to steal. If you try to avoid this position (assuming you’re playing against robots whose floor pickups are long enough to reach the top nodes — but maybe that’s not the final archetype), it seems like you lose a good portion of the narrow loading zone that you were trying to shorten in the first place.
I do not envy the refs watching zone lines this year.
yeah it would happen once at the start of the match only in the loading zone. We were thinking it might save 2-3 seconds per cycle which may give us another cycle which may be critical for completing another link
This strategy requires the other robots on your alliance be able to pick up from the ground quickly and efficiently and be quick to get to the other side to score quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, your robot will just be piling up game pieces. Would those two robots essentially be playing 2 vs 3?
What happens when your robot joins the two others for the endgame? If you have a lot of game pieces piled up at the exit of the loading zone, will you be caught controlling multiple game pieces when you leave for the endgame?
Interesting, I didn’t think about that. They could still push or grab them if they have an in the bumper intake, but that leaves fewer options than I expected.
To clarify the ploughing strategy, this will be 1 trip during teleop. When we deposit the first game piece from the staging area right when teleop start, the human player on both substations will start dunking pieces up to around 8-9 pieces in the loading zone. The robot with the ploughing ability will enter the loading zone first, ploughing the 9 pieces to the edge, take one, and head to the community. In the meantime, the second robot will reach the edge where pieces were ploughed, collect, and headed to the community, the third one will then enter and grab. By the time the third one grabs it, the 1st bot would be heading towards the edge to collect again, and this would make the opposing team stealing in risk of fouls. However, everything said about the risks of pieces getting stolen still holds true, but it is actually not as severe as it sounds. Each piece ploughed to the edge could potentially save 3 seconds, and if 9 pieces are ploughed, that could save 27 seconds overall, which could potentially add another cycle. The ploughing bot will only perform it once maybe twice at most, and it will still keep the capabilities of scoring, as right after plowing it will score.
Cherrypen outlined our potential strategy very clearly. To summarize: We will do one plowing trip to the edge of the loading zone, depositing all the cargo except for one piece before we leave the loading zone. Then, we will no longer have to go to the substations to get cargo. As long as our alliance members can intake from the ground, and we continually have robots from our alliance going to the plow pile, we should be able to prevent stealing. However, if you all have counterpoints and see potential problems with this strategy, please let us know.
Our team discussed a similar strategy idea, but one robot on an alliance acts as a “shuttler” and delivers one cube/cone at a time to the community, with another robot lingering in the community with the intention of scoring the delivered cubes. Shuttlers would shuttle for the majority of teleop. It’s likely that an alliance’s feeder station will get crowded fast during teleop and the shuttler strategy would make scoring a lot quicker by keeping the feeder station freed up for two robots instead of one. Any robot that can intake from feeder and traverse the field fairly quickly can play as a shuttler. Having three robots constantly trying to enter/exit the community or feeder stations gets clunky.
I’ve been advocating something similar on our team. As a general idea, I think it works, but the actual execution may allow for having the shuttlers score low-only or mid if they are fast enough, while the dedicated score-bot is busy or overwhelmed. Score-bot can pick up from low and move to high without having to turn around, so long as it’s a swerve/mechanum and can strafe. I also think it’s good to have a pre-planned link placement strategy to maximize your score vs potential for the rank point.
This year is the year of the box on wheels. For low resource teams, you can be an incredibly valuable partner by being short, fast, narrow, having a simple grabber, and being able to balance the platform in auto.
Your gameplay strategy:
In auto, either score your gamepiece on the floor, or drop it for one of your partners to score higher up. Then drive over the ramp and back on from the other side and balance it. You may be able to accomplish this by simple dead reckoning, and having a drivetrain which can apply brakes to lock in place in the center of the platform and allow it to stabilize.
In tele, you fly off the platform and steal the other alliances remaining floor GP’s and deliver them to your own partners. You will have a head start in reaching these GPs since you are already on the ramp. Then you fetch GPs for your partners to score, and also tangle up the other alliances robots and slow down their cycling.
In the end game, because you are narrow and a good balancer, you can get up on the platform early and lock yourself in place on one end. Then your other partners can get on and balance. By being the narrow third robot on the platform, you are a hugely desirable elimination alliance partner.
