I thought I would engage my team in an exercise on best practices on intake system design. I thought it would be helpful to gather information for the latest season. So here goes:
Which were the best intake systems that you observed in Rapid React? What made it stand out?
Thanks!
Citrus Circuit’s 2022 intake.
It probably performed about as good as other top team’s intakes (973, 254, 111, 27, ect.)
It just went in and out really fast, and the driver was really good at using it effectively, being able to spin around and pick the balls up really fast.
I think 1706/254/5490 double-sided intakes were all pretty effective. Whether that is a possibility depends on the entire machine, but this video highlights being able to intake & shoot with a two-sided intake: RR 1706 - Shoot and Move - YouTube.
I did like how the 1619 collector worked: Behind the Bumpers 1619 Up-A-Creek Robotics | Rapid React Robot - YouTube
I thought 1323’s was super fast intake on video: 2022 CARVER F2 / FRC 1323 / CLEAN ROBOT VIDEO - YouTube
For my money the pneumatically actuated 4-bar-ish pop out intake was the best. Code Orange did it well, too. [Our students were going over their robot in queue at our first event in 2022 and we decided to to with a (poor) rendition for our second event.]
Pros:
Cons:
That was the conclusion we came to as well (and it was good enough to win a regional).
Ours was designed to be “shallow” enough that one could be put on both ends of the robot, I kinda wish they had gone down that route.
This was the way. Worked exceptionally well for us. Sucked game pieces right in, retracted quickly, including when hitting stuff, and didn’t have any major failure the entire official season.
If you want a simple intake that can intake balls on the ground then 1678 would be the way the go. But if you want to go a step further and be able to intake bouncy balls then 1323 and 4414 late season bot had great intakes
Everything depends on robot size and packaging in general. For our team, during the 2022 season, we had a very small robot that was 24"x 24". Having to package pneumatics into an already crammed robot was regarded as a bad idea. We decided to use a non-parallel 4 bar that was driven by 2 NEOs on a gearbox. It ended up working pretty well. Similarly, we decided to use another over-the-bumper intake this season, a parallel 4 bar, which also worked great. Single pivot intakes can be simpler, however, they often take more vertical space, which doesn’t always work out, especially in the case of a small robot.
1577’s is worth taking a look at
It’s pretty unique and worked very efficiently.
It’s been implied, but just going to add in: maximal width and I taking over the bumper.
I also agree with the pneumatic 4 bar.
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