What will we see more teams doing? Feeder station or floor pick up?
Great robots will be able to do both.
You will most likely see more teams only be able to be fed from the feeder station. However, your question makes it seem like a robot who can pick up from the ground won’t be able to be fed from the feeder station. The advantage of having floor pickup is the discs on the ground during auton and picking up missed shots. If there aren’t missed shots in a match, most teams will still be able to be fed from their feeder. And if it is found that picking up off the ground isn’t worth it, the teams with pickup mechanisms can simply deactivate or remove them from their robot completely. If it is found that they are super helpful, teams without them are going to have a harder time to adapt.
In conclusion, more teams will be going to feeder stations, picking up from the floor has a good chance to be a game winner (auton).
I concur with Glenn.
I think we’ll see more robots feeding, though if it’s like past years we might see a good amount of both. My team has chosen hand-feeding to save time, weight, and complexity on our robot.
Floor pickup. Every missed frisbee will end up on the ground, so the floor will be littered frisbees.
And some great robots won’t.
I don’t think it is necessary for this game, but the ability to do so can increase your autonomous scoring capabilities, this is the reason we chose to add a floor loader. I don’t think we will be using it that often in a match, but we won’t know for sure until we see some actual gameplay.
If you have floor pickup, can’t you just human load off the floor?
Autonomous is the main reason to have a floor loader. Human load only robots will still be great this year, probably better than 2011.
There’s one major problem I see with that, mostly time. From what I can see of most teams’ designs, they’d have to back up after picking up a disc to let the feeder drop another one for them. Having to back up and then line back up for each disc will take far too long. It’s possible to avoid this, but I think most teams will simply have a dedicated loading device.
Here is some video of two floor pickup systems.
Team 1493, The Falcons, had one of the most amusing systems.
Team 20, The Rocketeers, had one of the best.
We do feeder station exclusively.
Shouldn’t this be a poll?
There’s one major problem I see with that, mostly time. From what I can see of most teams’ designs, they’d have to back up after picking up a disc to let the feeder drop another one for them. Having to back up and then line back up for each disc will take far too long.
Why wouldn’t the human player just push 4 frisbees through the slot while the robot is on it’s way there, so they’re sitting on the floor waiting for the robot to drive across them and pick them up when the robot gets there? Seemed to work pretty well for 2056 in Toronto.
While this is a completely valid strategy that my team (and I’m sure many others) discussed, there are a few issues.
– When you’re dropping them onto the ground, it’s quite doubtful they will fall in a nice line for pickup. They might flip upside down, be stacked on top of each other, etc. This could be a problem.
– Since you’re dropping them from the edge of the field, they’ll be right next to a wall. Some teams have trouble picking up right next to a wall, but this might work fine for others.
– Say the robot that’s going to receive the four discs is just finishing their current shots (let’s call this Robot A), and about to head back for more. The Human Player begins dropping them on the ground, so that all four will be there and ready when the robot returns. The Human Player finishes, and the robot is nearly to the feeder station, but suddenly an opponent robot appears from under the pyramid (let’s call this Robot B), and pins Robot A to the wall. Robot B can only hold the pin for a few seconds before a penalty, but in that short time frame, another robot with ground pickup on Robot B’s alliance (Let’s call this Robot C) drives over, and grabs the Frisbees. Robot B releases the pin, Robot C scores 12 easy points, and Robot A is now forced to wait for four more Frisbees.
– On a similar note from the previous point, you really don’t even need Robot B in the equation. Assuming the Human Player starts dropping discs before Robot A arrives, Robot C could just run over and grab a disc or two before Robot A gets to the feeder station. Robot C gets easy points, and slows down the other alliance, killing two birds with one stone.
If your pickup is really really fast, defense is sparse, and your human player is competent, it would probably work. Otherwise, it’s a safe and easy bet to just design a ramp to intake discs directly.
Ground pickup > Feeder pickup
My proof? Go ask 2056.
It was a shallow week 2 regional. I would ask them after Waterloo.
Regardless; they hold the highest score in FRC; but your right, we’ll see in Waterloo.
Teams with ground intake have been doing well (2056, 1986, 70, etc.), but then again so have teams without a ground intake (610, 1114, 862, etc.) As Paul Copioli said previously; there will be exceptional teams in both categories.
2056 also won GTR paired up with 1114, who was a star human-loader. 118 and 148 won at lone star with an identical arrangement.
Having more than a single fast floor loader is almost a waste, for lack of a better phrase, as a single robot on par with 2056/118/254 in terms of pickup speed is going to clear the field extremely rapidly. This is especially true in eliminations, where the majority of disks aren’t ending up on the floor.
Is “amusing” good? Im going to assume that its a good thing. Yes it was not the most effective pick up method. We really wanted one just like 20 but we could not get it working great on carpet and we had an old vac setup from our ball control system for the soccer game. We were amazing how well it sucked up the pieces.
We were really happy with how it worked out. We never once had to go to the other side of the field and never could not find discs to pick up.Plus you get the added protection of the tower near you and so many teams are scared to go near you. Could we have done it faster and more effective…Yes… But for a team that tends to struggle we feel like we nailed our game plan this year. Id say floor loading is the way to go. Good defense can slow down station loaders to easy. Unless you start seeing “lineman” style bots that set picks/blocks for teams to make it to the station.
Thank you for the video BTW
Not true. It can give you a 12 point advantage in autonomous.