1114 in 2008 created a design archetype for effective bots in 2014 with their intake design, that robot deserves all the praise it gets. In 2013 and 2014 971 had the best intakes in the world IMO because of the clever ways they did active centering. 971 in 2014 is one of my all time favourite bots. I also think the 2015 argument of claw vs roller intakes has been pretty definitively answered: rollers are generally better.
330 in 2005 stands as one of the smartest, simplest, most elegant manipulators. World Champion MCC.
Most innovative intakes I’ve seen come when we have to intake something new and weird.
1114 2015 is the obvious one in terms of who copied them both during that year and in 2018, but also the different frisbee intakes from 2013 were influential in gear intakes for 2017. 2007 roller claws were influential in 2011.
148 2010 was hugely influential in helping teams figure out how to consistent grab the soccer balls without pulling them all the way in.
Who did the first mecanum intakes? I remember 179 from 2015, but I’m sure they weren’t the first to do those.
2767 Stryke Force’s gear intake in 2017 was amazingly fast. It really helped them on cycle time.
I think, we in 2017 had an very effective ground intake for gears:
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just getting the link for you.
This thread is useless without pics and details of why a certain intake design is good(looking at you OP).
Internally on 95 we look to 2 of our old robots for intake inspiration.
Fyenman from 2002: full-width rollers but covered in carpet grip and with curved front contours that allowed balls to hit the rollers first and then guide them in. Our first truly high-speed intake where the rollers ran 2-3x the linear free-speed of the robot. He was capable of collecting ~20 soccer balls off of the side of the field in a few seconds.
Then in 2012 we developed our ‘carwash’ intake. Able to collect at full speed using no-slip carpet material and over-the-bumper deployment.
Whenever there is a round game object we use these two machines as a starting point because they were simple, fast, and effective.
That is a very interesting design. It seems rather simple too
Spectrum and Titanium in 2014 come to mind. Don’t know if they came up with the idea or if someone who was a little less visible came up with it first. I can’t imagine many people used vectored intake wheels effectively before 2014.
It is, super simple. That’s what it makes it so effective IMO. Just drive over the gear.
How is everyone saying 971 but nobody is mentioning 971 2016? Easily one of the best and most effective intakes that year, maybe ever. It had variable ball compression by changing the arm angle, it stowed nicely on the robot, and could pick up boulders on nearly the entire front side of the robot with the vectored intake wheels. Combine that with the collision avoidance that contoured to the arms unfolding and it’s easily my favorite intake of all time.
971’s 2016 intake stands out to me- that robot exemplifies “touch it, own it” better than any robot I’ve seen.
2056 2012 - That thing just ate balls like no tomorrow and was also great at picking balls off the bridge. Part of what made it so awesome was the indexing system. It didn’t try to index the balls at all until they were inside the robot and free to move around without jamming.
341 2012 also had a nearly identical intake and indexing system.
We used a shuttle valve on ours as well for our first competition. However, a slow leak in our pneumatic system caused us to lose enough air before the beginning of a match that our auto failed. We ended up pulling the shuttle valve and swapping the low-pressure side for surgical tubing so that if we ever lost air we would still be able to grip/manipulate cubes. I’m glad to hear other teams are having success with it though!
That is really cool.
Did you get any hassle over R96? This rule, or its variant every year, has stopped us from doing clever things like this in the past.
R96. The outputs from multiple solenoid valves must not be plumbed together.
We were pretty sure the rule “The outputs from multiple solenoid valves must not be plumbed together” was there to prevent teams from using multiple solenoid valves in parallel to get around the CV restriction. The shuttle valve only lets the output of one solenoid valve through at a time so they aren’t really “plumbed together” in that sense. The shuttle valve also still allows the cylinders to completely vent per R95. We’ve passed inspection at three events fwiw.
2011 was an eye opener for me. Several teams ended up using this architecture that I think is incredibly good.
Over/Under roller claw with a jaw. Basically all the benefits of a roller claw with a better release using a jaw mechanism. Usually the jaw is does with a pneumatic piston. This allows for compliance grip as well as quick release.
I saw a few versions of that architecture last year for gears, and this year for boxes that is extremely effective.
987 from 2013 really stood out to me for not only how effective it was, but that there wasn’t a bumper cutout or an intake outside the frame. This is what I was reminded of when I first saw 2767 in 2017.
469 2013 - How did that thing even work. Like most of their robots I’m really not sure why they chose to do the things they did but it ended up working really well. They’d just drive over a frisbee and it would end up in the robot. It even flipped upside down frisbees right side up. It’s mindblowing.