So far many Deep Space robots don’t really seem like carbon copies of each other. Last year we saw just about every team last year put Andymark green compliant wheels on an intake and elevator. 2017 was even worse with almost every bot being a hopper/box on wheels with a gear chute. This year is different, not many bots have the exact or similar design. Lots of teams are doing combined grabbers this year, but not many are the same. I personally really like how different the designs get. 1425 is easily one of my favorite bots already just because of the design. I also feel like a lot of robots designs are more complex than last year as well. Let me know what you think.
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Having two different game elements increases robot design variety.
FRC has not had many games with two game elements.
You have to go back to 2004 Big balls, small balls & movable goals.
(sidenote) 2017 had two game elements (fuel & gears) but most teams opted out of fuel because of point values.
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My favorite design I have seen this year is probably 694’s robot. I think that the climb system they used (literally a suction cup) was very unique compared to all the teams using stilts to climb.
Yup, I’ve not seen nearly as much convergent design this year. Even “proven” designs on really good robots still don’t work great when moved to other bots. As others have noticed, and I will re-iterate, it’s really hard to build a single mechanism that does both gamepieces well.
This fact creates some fairly unique solutions, and/or creativity in mounting two mechanisms on the same bot. Both of which in turn create more permutations.
Of side note in 2017 - there was almost zero chance to handle fuel and gears with the same mechanism, so everyone had to split it up. Given the volume requirements for fuel, and the height restriction preventing a “dump” strategy, everyone had to go for some form of hopper+shooter. Where the diversity came in was in the particular type of delivery mechanism and shooter. Single-lane /dual-lane, flywheel or lots of motors, turret/fixed, gravity-fed/active-fed… The next time we have a shooting year there’s actually a lot of great design to back and look at here. But, the whole “only matters in auto” meant that anything but the top-notch designs were unfortunately ineffective. To me, gears seemed much more straightforward: Pickup off ground, rotate 90 degrees, actively “punch” it out onto the peg. The faster the better.
2015 effectively had two game elements (totes and cans) since very few robots manipulated pool noodles.
Pretty good variation… only copy I see repeatedly is snow problems Ri3D L3 climb that and a lot of A-frame bots for hatches. I think the 90 degrees scoring target to player station has a lot to do with unique ways to solve that issue in cycle times…I think Einstein may come down to strong drivetrains and ground pickups. Both to withstand defense and decrease cycle time.
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