Well I have not seen any teams do it too effectively, collecting the 10 Pt. balls either in auto mode or during a match. Are there any effective robots out there that can collect the 10 pt balls, and how do they do it?
(PS I thought it was funny how the robot in the kick-off simulation had 2 big hands that grabbed the ball 
)
We are able to grab it with our arm bu itās not really worth the time to do so.
Iāve been looking at wildstangs robot and wondering if those round things on top were meant to pick up the 10 pt ball. They might have had that features, but decided it wasnāt worth it. I may be completely wrong though.
i think any team that has arms can pretty much do it, the only bad thing is that it takes time to allign the arms to the ball and get it out with out knocking it off. itās about the time it takes to get it from the tee to the human player and the hard part is in the goalā¦
In general, its better to corral two balls than chase after one, unless you are so good that you fill up your goal or run out of balls to corral (technokats, im looking at youā¦). The benefit on investment (in design and implementation) for getting those balls just isnāt high enough.
look at that pic both 10pt balls from one side in the goalā¦ what a move!
If nobody activates the balls in autonomous and you have a ball collecting robot, you might as well try to collect and score the 10 pt balls.
I think itās mechanically possible for our robot to pick the 10pt ball up, and I believe we could write up an autonomous program that would do it reliably, but the robot would have to drive slow since we get the best accuracy when we go slow.
Hopefully weāll have programs at nationals that do something besides sit around for the remaining 12 secs after weāve knocked the ball off. We have some cool ones that ignore the ball altogether, but they no longer fit our strategy and weāve never run them in competition.
You could always spin in a circle for those 12 secs. I realize it might suck down your battery, but it would be entertaining.
Alternate autonomous strategies include banging into a wall, backing up, and banging into the wall again (repeat). Thatās the strategy weāre working on at least.
We ran that one during our last qualification match at MWR. We knocked the 10 point ball off, drove back towards the movable goal like usual, then took a sharp turn into the outside wall. I guess thatās what we get for adding more points to our program without looking them over very closely. One of my favorite programs to run is: drive out, raise arms, get arms hooked on bar, keep driving forward so arm almost rips off :ahh: We ran that a few times during SW development.
We can get the 10 point ball in auto if we ever get our timing right (we put a coating on the wheels to make the bot turn better and the timing is off slightly) - but we can actually pick of the ball off the tee and hold it, then dump it and push it into the ball corral - pics on site if you want to see how we do it - there arenāt actually pics holding the ball but you can see the arm the slides under and lifts it up - link to site in sig.
the easy part is to get it in the goal. the drivers just take too much time
I think itās quit obvious that you all have not seen our robot in action team 1083; we were at the ucf regional and the Chesapeake regional and from the looks of it we look liked the most sufficient ball collector.
I have a question for anyone from Wildstangā¦what were those cupped things on the top of your robot for? At first I thought they might have been for the 2x ballā¦but I never saw you use them at MWRā¦but that might have been because I was driving and never saw any of the matches.
hereās my 2 c from what i saw today in practicing at the Can Reg; no one is worried about that oneā¦ really I think the beat thing to do with that ball is knock it over with the three starter balls.
#1 It is no longer called the autonomous mode, The name is the āhypnotic modeā. Just observe the behavior of the zombie bots as they optically weave their way into the walls or each other.
#2 Time and effort to gather 10 pt balls is not worth the effort if you can corral and deliver the 5 pt balls. 10 point balls are the ball chutes from the past years. Nobody bothers.
#3 Balls beat hanging. Do the math.
You are correct, if you look at the range of the frying pan grippers they can grab either the small or large ball. We have not perfected autonomy to the point where we attempt to grab the 10pt - we just knock it off. And as has been said, it is not worth it to do it in driver mode.
I think itās quit obvious that you all have not seen our robot in action team 1083; we were at the ucf regional and the Chesapeake regional and from the looks of it we look liked the most sufficient ball collector.
You guys did collect balls well, not as well as 33, the killer bees, but still very well. As for the 10pt balls, they are worth it if you fill up the goal. During the practice matches when humans were feeding the HPs at Chesepeake i saw goals get so overfilled that balls would tumble out every time people shot at them. So if you can get 1 or 2 10pt. balls in there i really increases your score, especially if you can cap. They can be the deciding factor in a game. Lots of games this year have come down to a 5 or 10 point differance, so the 10 pt. balls can push you over the edge. Its not worth dedicating to much time to, especially not in driver mode, but if you can get them during autonomous mode, you can raise your chances of getting picked for an alliance or winning your match, that is if you control the ball after it is on tghe field, you dont want a team like 1083 grabbing it from youā¦
if youāre having trouble figuring out what to do with the rest of autonomous, we had a program last year featuring us knocking bins off the ramp, then āclappingā with our handā¦it looked great when the turn got messed up, and a human player had placed a bin right next to the polycarb wallā¦so our robot smashed and broke the bin, then applauded itself.
iād like to see some autonomous programs designed purely for entertainment value.
Haha thatās greatā¦
I will agree with the autonomus statement thoughā¦a lot of them just wandered out into the field until they hit somethingā¦and having a sucessfull autonomus turned out to be rare. But heyā¦youāve got to give those with autonomus modes more credit for actually trying.