Hi all!
Pretty new here, so I’m not sure what goes and what doesn’t, but if it goes, I would love to hear some ideas on what teams are thinking for a coral floor intake? Thank you!
It’s an interesting idea, but our team likely won’t do it due to the difficulty of aligning the coral.
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we are still uncertain as of now. we are actively in debate and discussion over our priorities. We agree that it would be benifitual as the coral could bounce. Hopefully we will have a coral floor intake but that could change.
None of these are our designs.
Penn State produced a good-looking motion roller intake.
4481 tested dropping coral onto the ground, the position seems to be a little inconsistent. They’ve done a lot of intake testing, which you can see on their youtube page.
It seems likely that most teams will focus on human player drop-ins, as that seems to be more reliable. The reef area is only ~15ft from the chute, so the cycles can be pretty rapid.
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Rolly grabbers are king.
Coral isn’t compliant, so something has to give, hint hint.
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Considering two unprotected coral stations, and a limitation of one defense robot, is a ground pickup worth having?
My initial opinion was that a ground intake would be very beneficial. With an opponent bot guarding a coral station, two station-pickup robots could get congested at one station (considering a trade of robots.) Additionally, a ground intake would theoretically be able to pick up every available coral, whereas a source-only intake could never touch the elements on the ground.
Tonight, however, my thoughts have flipped. Two robots to one source doesn’t sound all that bad, and source-intake designs seem much more possible and efficient than ground intakes. On the team level, I’m also sure that there will be many robots around with ground intakes that could help on an alliance.
Of course, a “touch it, own it” intake for both the ground and the source would be ideal, but I haven’t seen or thought of any concepts for one. And from a priority standpoint, I believe a deep climbing mechanism would be much more worthwhile than a ground pickup.
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If you drop a donut, do you pick it up, or go to the box and get another?
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The 4481 side roller intake could be placed on a pivot similar to like 1986 2013 to allow for both ground and source intakes, while potentially saving an elevator stage.
The benefit to ground intake is that you can roll coral to the robot by using the gaps on the side of the robot then forcefully shoving them with a 2nd piece of coral, which will reduce driving distance and make source defense impossible. Whether this is faster than just driving the extra distance is a different question, but rolling coral needs to be accounted for in the value tradeoff.
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I think that, with most designs that I’ve seen, it would be very difficult to drop a piece after intaking it and moving away from the source. It that situation, though, I think it would be ok to go back and grab another one, as long as it doesn’t happen consistently.
Pushing coral with a second piece is a super interesting idea.
Our team was creating very similar concepts to the one you just described. I think it’s our best idea so far, but I don’t see it being “touch it, own it” accurate from the ground.
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Waiting for the @Ryan_Swanson floor piece red herring post still.
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Three second rule.
It’s ok if your ground intake captures a dropped coral quickly — too slow and it will become germy, so you’re better off getting a fresh one. Like that donut.
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I don’t drop doughnuts that often and when I do and the box is so close by I might be a bit too lazy to bend down and pick it up.
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I think there are a lot of red herrings in this game. Teams with a narrow scope will perform the best.
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Where did I drop it and how far away is another?
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Also is the 5 second rule still good? Or do I really want a new donut?
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Depends on context. If I drop the doughnut in my garage probably no. In my kitchen off a freshly cleaned floor? I was a kid in the 70s, that’s just extra flavoring.
In a game where you have to travel across the field to the loading station, picking up a dropped coral and saving the field traversal time could be very beneficial. On a field where the loading and scoring stations are near each other it’s less beneficial.
It’s possible to score at least 60 coral on your reef, maybe as many as 72. There’s only 63 coral per side to start. In a scenario where the loading station coral is exhausted a floor pickup could be handy.
If you want to score more than one coral in autonomous a floor pickup is required.
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You’re allowed to use the human player stations during auto, so this actually isn’t the case.
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You might want to Q&A that. The human player is a member of the drive team and the drive team is not allowed to provide “input” during auto.
