Now that the season is (for all but 8 teams) over, what was the best gear mechanism you saw this year? Alternatively, who do you think had the most effective gearbot at competition?
Two that immediately come to mind are 2848 and 604. Both these robots absolutely dominated at putting up gears in their respective events. But when these two paired up at the championship, all hell broke loose. They put up 4 rotors like it was nothing. These two should share the title of Gear Kings.
610 and 340 were contenders for the best gearbots.
Along with that, 340 had a very eloquent gear mech.
Also, teams 4481 and 2200 had a mech that I still don’t fully understand and probably won’t until I see some CAD.
Honorable mention goes to 4276 because their videos keep popping up on my youtube and I subsequently keep watching them over and over. That mechanism is simple yet effective and very entertaining to watch.
Team 5687 The Outliers had an amazing gearbot and season, ranking 1st at their first two events, winning their first event, winning Carson division with us and earning 4 engineering awards. A match with them in Carson was basically a guaranteed 4 rotor match. They were one of the best non-shooting robots in the game, if not the best.
+1
+1
I think what made a gearbot good was their speed (hence why we went with 6 CIM drive). Went it comes to the highest speed, there are 2 gearbots from Roebling division that come to mind: 1011 (Crush, who had a floor mech) and 6705 (Wildcat 5e, who had a passive mech). I also heard from one of friends on team 900 (who were in Newton) that 180 (SPAM) could get 11 gears undefended, don’t know for certain though.
5687 and 340 have plenty of love already, so I’ll hype on 558.
558 got a four rotor match for every qualification match at Championship, and was on an alliance in elims that basically only had two robots scoring gears at all. They were just inches from Einstein, losing to the consistency in scoring from the 1058 alliance. The robot moved very, very fast and could quickly floor pickup and score.
At 10,000 Lakes, team 4536 MinuteBots had a very impressive robot that was solely focused on gears and climb. I think their driver made all the difference. While they didn’t qualify for worlds I definitely think they deserved a spot there.
610/340/180/5687/558/2168/78/604/2848/1538/a ton of other excellent gear scoring machines
It’s hard to compare elite gear robots, even with scouting data, as there’s no reward for scoring gears past a certain point. And some other metrics, like # of 4 rotor matches, might be really good at comparing teams across the same event, but even championship divisions were very different events from one another.
The best comparison I can think of would be to try to find a sizable number of matches for each of these teams where they were cycling gears across the field the entire match and see what their average was in that subset of matches, rather than all matches.
You could also time cycles for a bunch of these teams and see whose cycles are fastest on average under various conditions.
125 did one gear per match on their Carson alliance, and they still managed to get 4 rotors before the other alliance basically every time. 5687 was good for 7-8 gears per match. It was insane.
2374 had a great season for gears. We developed a gear manipulator that moved laterally on the front of the robot. Made gear alignment a piece of cake.
We didn’t have a floor pickup, but at PNW champs we were getting six gears in teleop every match.
This is just simply not true. I just watched every Carson playoff match (end of the day on a Friday) and not only did they not average 7-8 gears per match, they never scored 7 or 8 gears in any match.
Don’t get me wrong, they are fast … really fast and their numbers are good. They are just not 7-8 good. Could they do 7 or 8 in a match? Sure seems like it. Did they? Nope.
Here is the breakdown:
QF 1: 1 Auto + 4 in teleop
QF 2: 0 Auto + 4 in teleop (had a 5th but didn’t need to place it)
SF 1: 1 Auto + 5 in teleop
SF 2: 1 Auto + 5 in teleop
F 1: 1 Auto + 5 in teleop
F 2: 1 Auto + 5 in teleop
So their teleop average was 4.67 and their overall average was 5.5 per match.
Don’t get me wrong; they were awesome and their speed at placing the gear was the best I’ve seen. However, 125 contributed more gears when they needed to and 1796 was really good, too. I have not done the count for each of them yet, but I plan on getting the data on all the Einstein alliances (curiosity is getting the best of me).
Paul
P.S. - Their alliance did a really good job of alternating gear duties based on defense, but clearly 5687 was the gear workhorse.
My team had a very nice gear ground pickup! 5813. We were the New Englad District champ finalist and 12th on Carson division, but didn’t make it to eliminations due to connection problems in some of our last matches.
I think a good question would be who scored the most gears in a match by themselves. Although it won’t be an accurate representation of who the best is due to alliances running out of gears to score, it would be cool to see what the best of the best looks like in a match.
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If I had to select a good gear bot to complement an alliance, I wouldn’t place much emphasis on peak gear placement number. Lots of bots are occasionally capable of high peaks. And while a high average placement number would be a little better criteria, averages vary due to difference in need. Given the choice between some well designed bots, what would sway my decision would an assessment of which one had the most exceptional driver, and which team appeared to be most willing and capable of following through with necessary changes in strategy. Presumably most of the teams consistently mentioned here excel in these respects. I’ve wondered why so few so far have been touted for them. Unfortunately, these are hard characteristics to quantify.
Yeah I never said I would want them as my gear bot, just wanted to see what the answer was.
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+1 we were on an alliance with them in iowa. even though they had their untrained backup driver, they still made it to the top 8!
No criticism intended. Would provide some quantifiable data for comparison. Not tie breaking for me.