You were implying that you hadn’t read the manual. I realize that not everybody memorizes it every year–I don’t, I go for the general gist and where to find stuff quickly, and on the field I use a cheat sheet–but after watching 3 weeks of regionals and spending 6 weeks building the robot, something along the lines of “how do you not know that” (even without the previously-mentioned manual reading) might actually be appropriate. “Ask a stupid question…” and all that. When a drive team member asked me if yellow totes counted on the scoring platforms (during a practice day), and then admitted to not having read the manual…Well, I did answer the question, but I also gave him one of those looks that is supposed to mean “I can’t believe my ears” or something along those lines.
To actually answer the question: If they place it there pre-match, it gets moved back to wherever it came from before the match starts. So they have to grab it mid-match.
We went with a ramp this week, and I don’t think it speed us up to significantly, but it eliminated a bunch of failure points we had while stacking from the chute on top of tote. Our design did not have any features to control the second tote, so we were at the mercy of our awesome human player to get the speed and location right to set on top of the tote on the floor.
He was very good at this task, but not 100%. When it messed up, it was ugly, and we put up scores of 14, 40, and a semifinal 48 which all most killed us. . .
Result at Waterford, two blue banners.
This week at West Michigan, we added the ramp.
Lowest score of the day was a 65, then 80 and 85.
Result West Michigan, one blue banner.
So for us, the result was not a huge speed increase, but eliminating some failure points, and making us more consistent.
We built a ramp that carried the totes all the way to the scoring platform after we had bagged and tagged. It didn’t fit within our withholding allowance so we had to fabricate it at our regional ( Smoky Mountain FRC Regional). During practice the officials had us move our battery inside our frame perimeter which threw 14 lbs of our ballast forward. It was a legitimate safety concern, but it crippled us on carrying a load. we realized to late that we could have built a carbon fiber box around our battery and salvaged using the spiral ramp.
We weren’t designed to use this ramp since it was an after thought. I hope someone with a slide, mecnum or swerve drive can pick it up and use it at championships. I can send the CAD work and material list if needed.