Best paths and practices for 4+ note auto

Question to those who have already figured out 4+ note auto:

What are some of the best ideas for picking up and scoring the three close notes in auto? What gives the most forgiving pickup and shooting?

  1. Where is it best to line up?
  2. What order are you grabbing the notes? Start on amp side or source side?
  3. Are you driving square / U shaped paths or a zig-zag (assume shooter and intake opposite sides of robot
  4. Are you shooting from the pickup spot, on the move or returning to a common shooting position to shoot after each pickup? (assume you can auto align to April tag)

Looking for what others have found gives the best results. I am concerned that every turn and movement will introduce more compounding error to our odemetry, or does that get cancelled out each time you auto align?

Thanks

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So we have definitely be theorizing the four note autos even though we haven’t tested it. A lot of it depends on robot design, but if you can reduce the amount your robot turns, then your compounding error in odometry isn’t going to be as significant (We saw that more rotation threw the odometry off in our case).

For 4+ note autos, I don’t think it will be too common, as in order to grab all 3 infront of the speaker, you need sufficient space to do so, and with 2 other robots of varying abilities also trying to score and leave the white line, it will be pretty clustered. I would think that for a four note, you would want to shoot your preload, and the one infront of your bot (if you start in the center of the speaker, the the one directly straight would be the next one), and then depending on how quickly you can get to them, get a third and fourth from the center.

The center is going to be an interesting and rather exciting phenomenon this year, as we haven’t seen auto battles for a while if ever. Our team has gone with a note ordering system in order to label our autos. (notes 1,2,3 are the ones close, then C1 through C5 to make the center line notes). I would recommend adopting something like that in order to simplify things for strategy.

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Corresponding our numbers go top to bottom, so the top is C1, bottom center line notes are C5. I believe that personally the really contended ones will be C3, C4, and C5, with less teams going for C1 and C2 due to it being out of the way. If you’re able to go under the stage, C1 and C2 aren’t as far, so you could also strategize grabbing those.

Honestly at least here in Ontario, I think the average bot will be a shoot preload, then either just leave the zone, or go get the one infront of their bot and shoot it. I don’t think we will see a lot of teams doing the 7+ note autos that we see here on CD. (Maybe we will see it more so in elims)

Thanks for the reply and insight. Cool to see a reply from a team we will actually see in competition at least twice this year!

Agree with the Ontario assessment. It will be interesting to see how protocols will play out, as the area is congested and those who have good ground pickup and scoring capability can accomplish more if less capable robots stay clear. Past games have not had the potential for as much pre-match conflict between alliance partners as this one may present.

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Like was stated before get the note behind you then go to the center. Trying to get the other close notes is a recipe for disaster unless you are in playoffs and have your autos choreographed with your alliance partners