At MSC this weekend, I watched someone (I think 469’s) human player feed 2 discs through the feeder slot at once. While there is of course nothing illegal about this, I was under the impression this was very difficult and the slot was designed so this was not possible. How was he able to do it and why hasn’t everyone been doing it all season?
On this vein, what are some techniques for feeding discs into robots through the slots that aren’t readily obvious? I know a similar thread existed at the beginning of the season but everyone has had a whole lot more practice now and I think it warrants a fresh thread.
It is possible but it’s not always faster or easier. We were feeding two discs for most of Friday at Bayou but stopped after we found a faster way to feed one disc at a time.
The slots are tall enough for two discs stacked on top of each other.
It definitely was 469 doing it (although there may have been others) and it was a she human player. The slots are 3" tall while the frisbees are 1.4" tall nominally, and then you can take off some of the height because of the way they stack. The reason for my team not doing this is that it would likely cause jams or upsidedown frisbees in our hopper, though I can’t speak for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if many teams simply hadn’t though of or tried this. I also don’t know how difficult it is to do this as we didn’t play with it extensively after seeing how the discs ended up in our system.
Their cycle time would not have been as fast as it was if not for this double disc loading.
As mentioned above, most teams did not design their robot anticipating this was possible. More than one disc would definitely jam their loading mechanism.
I don’t think there is a huge variation on the style of loading, however there is a correlation between how human players load and their loading time…obviously.
I was with a team that loaded extremely fast - had all four discs ready for loading before the robot made it to the station, and with a quick motion, slid the discs one by one (quickly) into the feeder.
There was another team that waited for their robot to come to the feeder station, fed one to the robot, picked up another disc from beside them, fed it in, and frankly it was aggravating to watch!
After I pointed that out to the team it looked like their speed and efficiency grew enormously.
But I digress - The point is that most teams intake can only support one disc at a time, whereas Las Guerillas’ nicely designed intake is a simple drop.(Reminiscent of Lunacy intakes, except upside down).
Q484. How many discs can be fed through the feeder slot at one time? Can one disc be used to push another disc through the feeder slot and into a robot? Can a feeders hand enter into the back feeder slot as long as it does not pass through the slot and onto the field.
2013-02-13 by FRC2481
A. The Rules do not limit the number of DISCS that can be fed simultaneously. The limit is purely in the geometry of the slot itself. There are no Rules prohibiting this. There are no Rules prohibiting this.
