considering the cones odd shape and a significant chance of them being knocked over(especially if the human player shoots are used), how do you pick them up and get them upright?
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I would use a claw mechanism to grab the “upper” section of the cone. No idea how to get them upright though.
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Take a look at FTC robots this year. While on a different scale and different material, their game pieces this year are all cones.
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I really love the GERARD design for cone orientation, the problem is getting cones into it, once they are in, a more normal arm compatible with cones and cubes could place them
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Hot(ish) take: don’t
There are 27 cones per alliance
There are 27 scoring locations, 12 are cone only
Just pick them up from the shelf upright and if you drop one just score it in the bottom
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my concern is it would require the driver to be lined up with the cone to orient it, it would probably be quicker to just put that cone at the bottom and get more cones from the human play station.
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I love How It’s Made:
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one of my mentors said something about the vex robotics 2018 game having cones. maybe that could be a good starting place?
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exactly my thought @WonkerBonker
I’m looking at Vex’s 2017-2018 game: In The Zone (ITZ) for inspiration.
In this game robots have to pick up cones off the field, just like Charged Up. Most teams utilized a Double Reverse Four Bar (DR4B) to grab cones and stack them quickly. I’m including a couple of robot reveals and high-level matches to showcase the advantages of this system.
Reveals
VEX 169 ITZ Worlds Reveal - YouTube
48180S SPAM Vex Worlds Reveal (Research Division Champs) - YouTube
note the roller intake on this one:
VEX U PYRO 2018 World Championship Reveal - In The Zone - YouTube
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It looks like the vex games can give some pretty good ideas about how to grab a cone, but I didn’t see any where they picked up cones that had fallen over on the ground.
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Given the fact that the cones have a flat base, i don’t think it’ll be too hard to attach a simple L-shaped arm to right the cones. ITZ cones didn’t have such a base so it was much harder. Plus, those cones weren’t worth a ton of points and there was a lot of them. Finding a way to flip over cones in this game will be pretty important, especially at high levels of play.
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I’ll point you in the direction of this thread:
It has a whole bunch of YouTube playlists of different mechanisms including cone intakes.
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When will a robot need to pick up a cone laying on its side? If that happens, is it a better choice to take the time to pick up that one, or just go to the station and get one that is already standing?
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A LOT of times
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This does limit the amount of game pieces you can place in auto on the mid and high nodes.
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First rule of FRC gamepieces is they will always be tipped over in a corner.
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Traf-tech UK meter tall cone machine collecting - YouTube traffic cone machine but this one doesnt utilize the inside of the cone to pick it up. It looks like an arm is picking it up from its side
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Why a lot of times? You are assuming that robots will drop cones while transporting them? How often will that realistically happen?
Yes, there may be a few cones left from autonomous, but probably not many.
I know Steamworks was an example where ground pickup mattered, but are you sure this will be like that?
My first reaction was to say that ground pickup of a tipped over cone was going to be important, but I’m honestly not sure that is true the more I think about it.