Posted to the Spectrum Youtube page tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b84NzkM30GE&index=1&list=PLTocT0DivsNnrvjnLZ9PZmI9G1DIKqNFx
Spectrum was happy to assist many of the teams that competed today. Getting more resources and virtual prototyping done for teams around the world is great for raising the level of play across FRC.
Interesting and confirms what I have been stating about defense as a viable option in the other threads…the “far switch bot dispupter and at-rick cube creator” should be devastatingly effective and a very viable design. Play the game on their end and keep them busy on their end … psychologically devastating.
Cubes on side is no surprise, the tall bot poses as you stated headroom and possible tippage yet can be desirable for the climb and elevation…decisions decisions.
Depth perception on the scale we had not thought of , makes sense since we are used to in front of us goals not to the side varying side scoring plates without a wall of some sort… I can see that being an issue now an creating at-risk cubes …thanks for mentioning that.
Small bot… we made a scale field and scale bots to war game with. Yes that platform is pretty darn small and many bots will be at or over the ramp when trying to climb in endgame, significant challenge to park all three let alone climb one or more. So smaller bots would potentially have more room to operate in endgame and allow for unique climbing strategies as well. Interesting they designed a game for bot sizes as you could easily buid a small bot than can always easilt get any cubes from the exchange very quickly and deliver to the own scale super fast. Decisions…decisions.
I am convinced the Game designers on purpose put the Exchange in the place that makes easy auto hard and that the platform is a devious trap.
I’m glad I saw your thoughts on gameplay as we are finalizing our main design this morning.
Thanks to all involved for the match footage and analysis! We’re finally able to prototype more this season but these are stop great help to see some of what is possible and how the game elements behave. These will make for interesting discussion at our next meeting.
This is such an amazing resource. Thank you to everyone who ran this!
We’ll see after week 4… 
Thank you guys. This is a great resource.
Thanks to Texas Torque for hosting this event and thanks to Spectrum for getting the videos posted so quickly.
The Everybot team member I spoke with said they will be publishing a “How to” for this design including manufacturing drawings. CAD will not be helpful to many less capable teams who don’t have CAD capabilities yet. This was a very well thought out design, as one would expect from 118. It used inexpensive and readily available brackets from hardware stores. It was purposely designed to be manufactured using only the types of tools and equipment that even the lowest level teams would have. The control system is laid out nicely to make troubleshooting easy. This design embodies Karthik’s Golden Rules perfectly. It’s only weakness is that the floor pickup does not feed into the dumper. I suspect that, with some further thought, this weakness can be designed out. A climbing mechanism can easily be added at a later time. Without having calculated the scores, this robot may have had the highest OPR of any on the field yesterday.
Study the “2018 Field Layout and Marking” drawing “FE-00041” for the dimensions of all the zones and the distances between them. It looked too easy for robots running back and forth to the Portals to disturb their alliance mates as they are trying to score at the Switch or at the Scale. The stack of Cubes in the Power Cube Zone is also a constriction in the field. Lastly, Cubes that have been dropped or scattered from the Power Cube Zone will be impediments.
The tight and oddly shaped spaces suggest to me that being able to accelerate quickly to a moderate speed might be a good target for your drivetrain and overall design.
Defense
It will be a thing this year and it won’t be hard against a slower opponent. the robot with the red bumpers with “4587” is a 2017 robot with not capability to handle the Cubes other than pushing them around. It was not hard for them to frustrate Hour 12’s robot, the one with the A&M coloured bumpers (maroon) as shown in this video. Neither driver seemed that well practiced.
**Visibility
**The area on the far side of the Switch nearest the Driver Station will be partially obscured by the Fence and Switch mechanism as well as any robots trying to score on that Switch. It is less than 6’ from the far side Fence to the edge of the Platform and about 1’ is taken up by the row of Cubes.
Autonomous Mode
Having a routine that drives your robot forward and then ejecting a Cube is not enough as shown in the first 10 seconds of this video.
Game Piece Control
Test your active intake mechanisms very thoroughly, with the Cube in all possible orientations. There are many examples of robots struggling to acquire the Cubes with their active intakes then having no trouble when the orientation is a little different.
Test and refine your intake from the Portal under non-ideal conditions. The top of Team O’Ryon is visible at the bottom left having to push a dropped Cube out of the way for a second attempt at loading from the Portal in this video. A couple of dropped Cubes in front of the Portal would make it almost unusable. I seem to recall seeing this happen in the earlier practice matches that were not recorded. In the 2017 game, a robot could just move over a few feet for a second try at the adjacent Loading Station but would have to go to the other side of the field this year.
Keep control of your Cube. Hour 12’s robot spends one whole minute with the same Cube as it falls out of their robot several times and they have difficulty re-acquiring it in this video.
Scoring Mechanisms
For scoring in the Switch, and probably the Scale too, just ejecting the Cube so it just clears your bumper is probably not enough as shown by Team O’Ryon (dark blue bumpers with “4587”) in this video.
AMCC (Absolute Minimum Competitive Concept)
Team Caprisun was a “Robot in 12 Hours” built using a kit chassis by members of the host team, Texas Torque. It is the one with the big polycarbonate box on top and is totally passive. It can score relatively quickly by crashing into the Fence and using the momentum of the Cube to eject it. There is almost always a rookie team that didn’t know how much help is available and shows up at a competition with a box on wheels (sometimes just the box). The mid-level teams with extra resources (material and manpower) often help these teams get on the field and they often end up only being able to play defense. By bringing a sheet of polycarb and some extra tubing (or even 1" x 3" dimensional lumber), these rookies can be helped to actually score a Cube or two. That has to be much more inspiring than going back to school the next week to say “we played defense all weekend”.