I have watched a few videos from ISR #1, and looked through a bunch of match scores, and I have not seen one match where two robots harmonied. In fact, I don’t even think I’ve seen one video where two robots climb the same chain outside of competition. It seems to me that the time/coordination to harmony is not worth it.
Will harmony be a relevant mechanic in this year’s game? And does anyone have video of two robots climbing the chain at once?
Our very first drive practice this year we tried it successfully, took about 30 seconds. With practice, that time can definitely drop, but is never going to reach the sub-5 seconds we need to do it solo.
The problem is the cost/benefit. If a HARMONY means you miss an extra cycle, then the point benefit isn’t there - two robots scoring an extra note each is worth more than the HARMONY. If one of your teams robots can’t climb, then the HARMONY only only gets you the RP if it’s SPOTLIT, which means you either need to get lucky and have the HP score a HIGH NOTE in the right spot, or you need to be able to do it in sub-20 seconds, including racing around the stage to whichever side is SPOTLIT. If you have someone who can do the trap, then HARMONY doesn’t impact the RP. If you have three robots that can climb, then HARMONY only impacts the RP if none of the chains is SPOTLIT.
So, there are times where it might be worth going for a HARMONY. If all three robots can climb and you’re up significantly on points and no one can trap, then go for it to get the RP without having to rely on the HP. Otherwise… you might have other things you can be doing that will be just as valuable in the match.
I went through all of the matches scoring for ISR but I think I saw it 2 or 3 times tops. Teams would rather score in the trap(which was also fairly scarce). The only real reasons to do it is to get 10 for the ranking point, teams were barely climbing during playoffs let alone harmonizing
Given the poor point value especially compared to just doing another cycle + park, we almost gave up on it for our week 2 comp. The only reason we haven’t is for the ranking point possibility
We don’t have a trap mechanism (aside from trying to shoot into it), and are designed around climbing on the side. We should be able to fit on the side while another robot climbs in the middle-ish, unless they are super wide.
Not going for the trap allowed us to be much simpler, lighter, and faster, so we’re banking additional cycles being more valuable than a complex and heavy robot that can trap climb, and we’re thinking that we should be able to get the RP with the harmony anyways. Aside from 3 functional robots, I think all we’ll need for that is drive team coordination and planning on where we’ll all climb.
We’re just about to head to our week 1 regional at Port Hueneme, so we’ll see how this plan turns out.
Yes!, We are up in Northern MN so definitely not million dollar teams or anything. We have a local robotics coalition (ARC) with a practice field that travels from school to school every weekend, we personally have seen so many teams do it and we were able to do it as well last weekend. We found that it first took around 30 seconds and burned it down to 20-15 seconds after practicing a few times with other teams. What worked for us is not doing anything special we both just used our climbing mechanisms at the same time spaced apart on each side. Falling didn’t seem to be an issue the only thing was getting of the chain originally which was a struggle but the teams there got a really good hang of it. I’d watch the stream of Lake Superior Regional there a bunch of the teams there who I’d bet top dollar will do it, especially in playoffs!