I’m actually kinda curious to see how many teams out there are planning on having passive defensive structures (bolt on wall) vs active defensive mechanisms.
I imagine if a robot was designed to do defense as their main objective, they would/could have both.
My general rule is any robot that can move can play defense what you add ontop is what makes you more effective.
So does just being able to move count as active defense? Or an active defense mechanism?
No I would never call a drive base a mechanism. I’d call it a drive base.
But then it can passively play defense, right? :rolleyes:
What would you qualify as an active defense mechanism. If a tall robot has some sort of wall built into them, that is a passive mechanism. Would active then be fans/air to deflect the ball (Of course it won’t be effective at changing the path of the ball)?
Active= A mechanism that is built specifically for defense i.e. a wall, arm, etc.
Passive= No defense specific mechanism
That’s how I would define it.
Oh whoops I meant to say passive structure not mechanism on the poll my bad.
An active defense could be a vortex canon or fan to try and alter trajectory (regardless of effectiveness). For me active means that it in some way moves, articulates, or is powered to amplify its effectiveness.
A good drive base (and drivers) will do far more for making a team an effective defender than any other mechanism.
I agree, especially when defending against a robot whose drivers have less experience.
…and without vision
How can vision save you from defense? Is there an example from 2012 perhaps that shows a vision targeting system overcoming rough defense?
My team is investigating whether vision is necessary, just as my old team did in 2012. We ended up not using vision because it was easy enough to for the driver to accurately line up on the key where you can’t get defended against. This year may be different.
Right now the only way I can see a good vision system overcoming rough defense is if you have a turreted shooter with a high release point, and spend days calibrating the speed and angle of shots. My guess is that the most accurate high goal scorers at events will have a “sweet spot” to shoot from, and that very few (think 1717 in 2012) will be able to shoot from a wide variety of places and thus circumvent the defensive strategy of nudging the scorer while it’s trying to line up in its sweet spot.
I just think the outer works is going to be similar to tall stacks and obscure driver vision on the far end of the field. So many bots won’t have the vision needed on the far end anyhow, let alone trying to lineup on a sweet spot consistently after crossing an outer work defense.
Most teams are practicing without outer works obstructing their driver vision, pretty sure we’ll see lousy shooting from most teams in terms of accuracy unless the whole system is automatic.