What do you think the average capping time will be?
Speed = Displacement/ time, so it will vary. 
But seriously, A bet was made between mentors on our team that a team (any team, not specifically ours) in 10 seconds, will be able to:
grab a tetra, stack it on any goal, and then start to grab another tetra
(I believe this was involving tetras from the automated loading station)
Whether or not that will happen is yet to be seen, but… Maybe.
Personally I don’t think capping speed will be anywhere as fast as they led us to believe in the demonstration and animation videos at the Kick-off. It’ll be a slow and cumbersome manuever that only the best robot will be good at.
ah… I am predicting teams to be able to have tetra in hand and cap at about 5 seconds. So I guess that fits in with Elgins guess being he has more stuff in what his definition of “capping” is.
Good question… I like this one 
Wait, what? You mean automated loading station? Stationary goals were last year. 
Well, the goals are stationary this year but…I’m just being difficult :P. In all seriousness, I think that there will be a very wide gap between the select few who did it perfectly and the rest of us that didn’t think it through enough. I wouldn’t be surprised to see in every regional those robots that do it seamlessly every time, but I doubt that will be the norm. Most robots I would imagine taking 5-7 seconds just stacking the tetra. Anything that’s faster than that would greatly surprise me.
first of all, (no pun intended) i doubt the average speed will be remotely close to 10 seconds. i dont imagine there will be more than 2 or 3 robots per regional that are that effective. on the average, i expect robots to take between 20 and 30 seconds to cap, and cap about 4 tetras per round.
it is more complicated than simply grabbing a tetra and then dashing to the nearest goal. a team’s strategic placement of their tetras may be more important than their absolute capping speed. also, now that there are more opposing robots, i think it is more likely that they send at least one robot to play defense by preventing your robot from capping and loading.
one option, however, is to load more than one tetra at a time (wink wink), vastly increasing the robot’s time efficiency. instead of traveling back and forth to a goal twice to cap two tetras, it could stay close to the loading area to get two of them at once (leaving the area shortly between tetras), and then it would only have to go through the delicate maneuvers required for capping once. also, the addition of multiple tetras to a single goal relatively early in the match would significantly increase the goal’s height, and depending on the circumstances, make it difficult for the opposing alliance to regain control of the goal.
Wow, any team that can cap is 5-7 seconds will amaze me. I think about it this way:
capping the big ball on a goal last year is a “simmilar” activity, you have to pick it up, raise it up, align it, and then get it to stay the way you wanted. Seems pretty easy. Many teams thought they could do this in 10 seconds. The best teams under optimal conditions could do it in about that time. Most teams took about 25 - 35 seconds.
I thik good teams will be able to place 4-5 tetras per match, given the driving skill involved in placing them and the fact that 3 opposing robots could be trying to stop you or at least be in your way.
Any team that can score in 5-7 seconds will not only be my hero, but you are welcome to ally with us
Good luck scoring those tetras!
Rob
Ideally it would be 5-7, but who knows. It depends on if the bots are actually going to try and align it before capping or if they’re just gonna toss it on there and hope it falls into place.
You may have heard this quote before:
“Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it.”
In our game, many will try to get in their way.
Raul
I won’t be surprised to see several robots that can complete an entire capping “cycle” within 10 seconds. But would be very surprised if the “average” is under 20 or 25 seconds.
I agree with Stu. There will be some great cappers, but there also will be a lot of bad cappers bringing the average WAY down. If the average is better than 20 seconds I would be surprised - better than 15 seconds and I will be shocked (not that anyone is going to calculate an average over the season).
as a couple people have mentioned, average i have no idea but im sure a couple teams will have one cap in a few seconds past the match. many teams will be able to make a robot capable of capping REAL quick but if you add the other elements of the game you cant just focus on the first cap. and so the robots capping speed will decrease
Now you asked for average capping speed, so not including those teams that are generally unsuccessful cappers, you got to figure 25+ seconds. I know there will be a few teams at each regional capping in under 10 seconds, but most won’t. We used our robot from 2003 yesterday and attached a makeshift grabber to its arm and the best we did was 45 seconds from driving to a tetra picking it up and capping a regular sized goal. Now I figure with more practice and a better designed arm / robot we might get that down to 15 seconds. Under 10 seconds? - wow that’ll be fun to watch. Oh yea, what about those other 5 robots on the field that’ll be getting in way most of the time? Hmm, should be interesting.
even if u’r bot is a good capper-- u still can be slow though just depends on the mechanism being used
but the average of course will be affected by the two variables as mentioned along w/ techincally what competition. each competition the avearges will vary.
good luck to everyone and trying to develop a quick way
This is a fast paced game and the team that can put tetras on the goals the quickest, will end up winning
Let’s see, 8-12 pound difficult object to grab, elavate 8-10 ft, 3 robots gunning for you, 130lb weight limit on robot, minimal control on end of arm with 8-12 lbs applying a lot of leverage on 130 lb 28 in x 38 in foot print? I see disaster! Oh the carnage! Broken arms, broken tetras, broken dreams…Oh the Humanity! :ahh: That aside, you’ll probably see somebody do the impossoble in autonomous mode and blow everybody’s minds away! LOL :eek:
The best teams, during autonomous mode, will stack the vision tetra after they stack any other tetras. A team would want to successfully stack the vision tetra as close to 15 second as possible; that way, if an opponent has already stacked a tetra on that goal, you will have control of it. Keep in mind both teams will get the bonus tetras placed in their end zone goals if they stack a vision tetra on a middle goal during the autonomous period.
i think that waiting to cap the vision tetra at the last second is a bad idea because the robot will be more likely to collide with an opponent robot trying to do the same thing. i would rather secure the bonus tetras and then only worry about owning goals during the controlled period. dont forget that if you place the second tetra, the robot would have to reach about 6 inches higher.
I think the effectiveness of capping will be greatly impacted by the height of the goal. The center goal will be much harder to cap! I think the number of bots that can cap one of the short goals will be around 50% but capping the center goal will only be done efficiently by less than 10%. Times Will vary as well based on which goal. I think the average for the short goals will be around 15 seconds but the center goal will take on average about 20 seconds. The additional time is because the added complexity required to reach that height and the extra care that will be required when your center of gravity goes higher.