What are some of the best gear bots that have been revealed / have been filmed in scrimmage matches?
I haven’t seen it in action yet, but I would say check out 1529. I think that there are definitely better gear bots in the IN district (maybe some hat haven’t been revealed yet) but their improvement over the past few years is very evident, so I’d like to see how their strategy works out!
How are you defining “best” ?
I think that among all bots that manipulate gears (which is about 90% I’d say), any with active floor intakes are far better. From what I saw at Week 0 Nashua, many of the passive gear bots were having gears knocked out. By the end of the match lots of gears were strewn across the field. Any bot with an active floor intake should benefit from this and be able to cycle gears pretty quickly.
2169 looked really good at the Centurion-Krawler week 0 event: https://youtu.be/AXb42SIge0U?t=2h48m4s
They are the robot with the dark blue bumpers that have no numbers on them. They probably have better matches than this, I just found a random one.
I’m sure a number of really good gearbots have been revealed, but based on limited footage, there’s really no way to know whether (for example) 118 would be really good. You can get some indication of shooter throughput or maybe even shooter accuracy from the reveal videos so far, but gearbot speed is a function of a number of little things: robot speed, misalignment tolerance in picking up or receiving gears, misalignment tolerance in placing gears, driver practice. These don’t easily come out in a reveal video because they don’t tend to show a lot of full cycles, just the good shots and the “action.”
All that said, 4939’s reveal video (which has since been taken down?) showed them do 2 full cycles in 25-ish seconds, so they’re probably pretty good.
I’d definitely watch out for 1741. I was talking to their driver and he said he was able to get 13 second cycle times, which equates to 11 gears and time leftover to climb (he also says the climb is pretty dang fast).
1506 has an amazing gear pickup, if I do say so myself… 
Not that I’m biased or anything…
I also agree here! They’re a very good looking team as well!
We have an interesting system for are gear placer. We can run into the wall and a sensor will detect the location of the peg. Then move the gear and place it on. On average from the time we hit the wall to the time the gear is fully on is 1.5 sec. Hoping to cut that down to 1 second
Here is a video.
The most impressive Gear cycling robots I’ve seen from Minnesota are 2169 and 4536. I’ve watched both deliver 5 Gears in a 3 v 3 match multiple times. I bet both will improve throughout the season and consistently deliver 5-7 Gears under light defense.
Both of these teams chose to ignore Fuel, and that decision is going to pay off in a big way for them I think.
What kind of sensor?
I actually think 118’s gear pickup could be a point of weakness for them, since they have to lose positive control of the gear to get it off the ground.
we are using an ultra sonic sensor at the moment.
How would an ultrasonic sensor allow you to do that?
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Do you just keep going until distance gets way shorter and then drop the gear?
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just watch the video. The spring makes a pretty good target, and ends up fairly inside the robot. A short range ultrasonic, sideways across the front of the robot would give you what you need.
we can get 7-8 + 1 in auto and climb in light defense.
My bad. Thought it was in the gear-holding carriage, not the side of the robot. Thank you for clarifying.
Kind of obvious but the best gear bots will be the robots with the best drivers.
Floor pick up/non floor pickup, senors/no sensors, active/passive, the only part that matters is the driver really when it comes to placing and acquiring gears.
A good driver running a vanilla gear system will be just as good as a good driver with a tricked out system. I don’t think not having floor pick up will be too much of a detriment. The biggest limiting factor will be defense when it comes to gears which is where a great driver is especially useful.